Skip to content

Tag: Chamber of the Year

2026 Chamber of the Year Finalist-OneSpartanburg Inc. with Allen Smith

Miles Burdine Chamber Chat Podcast promo image.

Below is an auto-generated transcription. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.

Feel free to join our Chamber Chat Champions Facebook Group to discuss this episode and to share your own experiences and tips with other Chamber Champions.

Join the Facebook Group

Brandon Burton (00:01.344)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and here on the podcast, I introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. You’re joining us today for a special episode in our 2026 ACCE Chamber of the Year Finalist series. And today we’re joined by Allen Smith, president and CEO of OneSpartanburg Inc.

A native of Greenville, North Carolina, Allen began his career in local government before moving into chamber leadership with the Greenville Pitt County Chamber of Commerce. He later served as president and CEO of the Greater Greer Chamber, where he helped drive financial strength and membership growth. In 2014, Allen since 2014, Allen has led

The Spartanburg organization through major transformation, including the launch of One Spartanburg, Inc., a comprehensive community and economic development strategy designed to build a more vibrant region through business, economic, and tourism development. Allen’s work reflects a deep commitment to community leadership, regional collaboration, and long-term growth for Spartanburg.

Allen, welcome back to Chamber Chat Podcast. First of all, huge congratulations to you and your team for being selected as a Chamber of the Year finalist again. And love to give you an opportunity to say hello to everyone out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can get to know you a little better.

Allen (01:32.771)
Huh.

Well, I appreciate the opportunity to be back. I really do. And I think it’s such a valuable service. And so I’m I’m grateful to you that that you do this and just incredibly grateful to be back in the US Chamber of the Year space again. we won in twenty twenty one. We we haven’t applied since and so we decided, hey, look, we’ve we’ve had a really good run, so let’s let’s put an application together and you know, thanks to our partners, our team and and just a a willing community, here we are again and it’s very humbling.

particularly when you consider, you know, the Greater Des Moines Partnership and the Mobile Chamber of Commerce. They’re other they’re the other two finalists. So we find ourselves in in very good and elite company. So delighted to be with you today.

Brandon Burton (02:16.453)
Absolutely. Yes, we need that.

Allen (02:16.713)
interesting. Interesting. So that that’s that’s where I have to really think because I think any of our chamber leaders that are listening, there’s not a lot of time for interesting things or or hobbies in this space, particularly when you have two two young daughters. And so

I’m girl dad, I guess that’s the interesting thing about me. I’m all in. Painted toenails, painted fingernails. If they wanna do it, they wanna fix my hair, they wanna put makeup on, I’m I’m all in. Life is short, you know, time’s fleeting and you know, I I would rather my hobby be them than than something without them.

Brandon Burton (02:42.292)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (02:55.776)
Yeah, I love that. And that means they’re doing it right. So awesome.

Allen (02:59.799)
Trying. Every day it’s a learning process. And and when I get it wrong, they will they will tell me. That’s right.

Brandon Burton (03:02.616)
They’ll let you know. That’s right. well, for those listening, help help us understand one Spartan Burg geek. Help us understand the the organization, the scope of work you’re involved with, staff, budget, just to kind of set the stage for our discussion today.

Allen (03:22.413)
Sure, we well, you alluded to it earlier in in the bio. So in September of 2020, we took our countywide chamber, countywide economic development, countywide tourism, and consolidated it all into one organization. In fact, we renovated the whole building with that consolidation in mind. So it’s it’s one of the few places in the country where a chamber specialist or chamber expert is sitting right next to an economic development expert. So you might have somebody championing

Small business sitting right next to someone that’s working on tourism. And then about 18 months ago, we said we need to make talent our fourth vertical as well. So business, economic, tourism, and talent development all under the same umbrella. We’re about 33 FTEs, about seven tens, including our foundation. We’re coming up on a

Of $10 million. Incredibly blessed to be in this community, the third fastest growing MSA in the country. 29 people a day are moving to Spartanburg County. That’s about 10,600 net new residents a year. So it’s an exciting time to be in Spartanburg County. Obviously, growth comes with some challenges as well. But I will take those problems over the alternative. So again, just very blessed to be here in

Brandon Burton (04:40.802)
Yeah.

Allen (04:47.482)
this community and and and particularly under this model. I I really can’t imagine doing it any any differently than the way we do it here now that we’ve we’ve been under this umbrella now for six years.

Brandon Burton (05:01.878)
Yeah.

So I mentioned before we hit record that a couple weeks ago I had Matt Pavarnik on the show at Myrtle Beach and talked about the new collaborative that they formed there in Myrtle Beach, and he referenced One Spartan Burg Inc. a couple of times in that episode. obviously hold you guys in high regard with the model that you have. And it it’s something for the right communities to look at and and see how you guys are executing and bringing everything together and having that that synergy and focus.

is to help further further develop your community. So you guys are you’re doing something right there.

Allen (05:39.608)
Well I appreciate that and appreciate Matt’s kind words as well. We are we are so happy that he’s in the state of South Carolina.

Brandon Burton (05:46.743)
Yeah. well on these Chamber of the Year episodes, what I like to do is spend the majority of our time talking about the programs that you guys submitted on your Chamber of the Year application. So we’ll take a quick break and when we get back we’ll dive into those programs and learn more about the impact you guys are driving there in Spartanburg.

App My Community creates mobile apps that allow you to engage directly with your community. Enhance chamber membership by providing a unique advertising and communication channel to residents and visitors. Not just a member directory, App My Community has the tools to be useful to residents on a daily basis. Learn more at appmycommunity.com/chamberchat.

Alright Allen we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re gonna dive into the programs that you submitted on your Chamber of the Year application. if you would just give us an idea what those what those programs are and then we can dive into them in a little bit more detail.

Allen (06:21.858)
Well, you know, it’s it’s interesting. I our vision plan one point zero, which is a five year community and economic development strategy, two point zero, which was a five year community economic development strategy. Now we’re developing three point zero, which is a five year community and economic development strategy. So 15 years when we’re done with three point zero. And it is eerie how well it aligns with the Horizons initiative. and when you look at redegree and and power up and edge, all three of those programs, I I

Brandon Burton (06:45.121)
Yeah.

Allen (06:51.792)
Align quite well with the industry’s vision for the industry, and then of course with our vision plan. And so, first, redegree. So, we have economic development house here as we spoke about. One of the things that we need to do in Spartanburg is diversify our economic development approach. Our our bread and butter is advanced manufacturing, but if you want to diversify your economic development approach, you need to raise your education attainment levels. And so the quickest way to do that is to engage those people.

That have some college and no degree. And we’ve discovered there’s about 55,000 people that started their higher ed pursuit and life got in the way. Somebody got sick in the family, there was a financial hardship, whatever it may be, they had to stop and they never really went back.

And that’s sad, but you can reverse that story and that’s what Redegree is doing. So thanks to a partnership with the Spartanburg Academic Movement and Movement Twenty Thirty, we launched Redegree less than three years ago and the scale has been tremendous. I say less than three years, it’s actually been two years and two months.

1,703 people are have inquired about redegree, but most importantly, five hundred and two individuals have re-enrolled, and seventy four have graduated either with a credential, associate’s degree, or a bachelor’s degree. And again, that’s a very short amount of time. we believe that we’re really hitting scale. And so we think about in any community, if five hundred new

Brandon Burton (08:30.974)
Yeah, that’s a funny.

Allen (08:35.562)
People were going back to college, that would be like adding a small institution in your community and having a freshman a freshman class. And so that skill, we also know that this population, if left to their own devices, has a 2% chance of returning to college. So if you’re doing if you’re doing that math, you know, 1700 people that have started the process and 500 have re-enrolled, you know, we’re all over 30% of

Brandon Burton (08:41.559)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (08:55.34)
Wow.

Allen (09:05.442)
Actually re-enrolling. So that tells us that our interventions, our hand holding, we’re getting people across the line to re-enroll. And so that’s redegree. Under talent is Edge, which is our work-based learning program. We’ve engaged more than 120 employers. and since this thing kicked off two years ago, we’ve created 1,041 work-based learning opportunities. And that’s the new fancy way to say internships. but we believe that that’s in

Brandon Burton (09:10.657)
Yeah.

Allen (09:35.265)
incredibly important with seven institutions of higher learning. If we can ignite something in a junior or senior high school student and they can find applicable program here locally, we have a really good shot of keeping them. You know, if you’ve got that job at the end of the educational pursuit, you’re more much more likely to stay in the community. So delighted with the scale the edge has produced in a really short amount of time. And then power up power up

Brandon Burton (09:38.388)
Yeah.

Allen (10:05.218)
Was launched in April of 2023. We got some data through our visioning process. It wasn’t too good. Small businesses were not starting and growing at a rate comparable to our peers or on a national average. Furthermore, black-owned businesses were starting and growing at about half the national average, which sadly is a case all across South Carolina. And so, you know, chambers forever have been supposed.

Brandon Burton (10:29.496)
Allen (10:35.088)
Supporting small businesses, but we really wanted to do something differentiating and skilled. You know, not having a program where twelve or fifteen businesses went through it, give them a plaque, have a banquet, and celebrate what we’ve done to help small businesses. We really needed scale. And so we went to the county, and fortunately, the county had just gotten American Rescue Plan dollars. And they said, We believe this. We’re the best in the nation at recruiting big businesses. Our levels of investment indicate as much. But we want to be the best at starting and growing small businesses as

Brandon Burton (10:38.648)
Right.

Brandon Burton (10:57.832)
That’s right.

Brandon Burton (11:02.488)
Well,

Allen (11:05.038)
Well, so they entrusted us with a $6.5 million grant. we put our own resources with it, and since April of 2023, 2,538 small businesses have filled out intake forms. 66% have engaged, which means they have taken advantage of two or more of our offerings. And let me speak to our offerings. in three years, we’ve deployed $4.1 million dollars of grants and loans.

Brandon Burton (11:13.662)
Yeah, yeah.

Allen (11:34.881)
In the community. Talk about these are like 3.9% type products. So beating beating the private sector, these businesses would not be able to get that product in the private sector. 56 new small businesses have started. The small businesses we’ve been working with have created 234 new jobs. And this one’s a big one. We have been very successful at recruiting.

Brandon Burton (11:42.017)
Yeah.

Allen (12:04.844)
big businesses, but we would hear it all the time. Small businesses would come to us and say, hey, we want to do business with Corey Dr. Pepper. You know, we want to do business with Hintech. We want to do business with BMW Plant Spartanburg. But when you begin to unpack to them what that really requires and what they need to do, they are not even close to being ready. So what we did is we hired the recently retired supplier readiness person at BMW Plant Spartanburg and she has been helping small businesses

Get ready to do business with big business. And results are off the chart. So in three years, she’s helped small businesses secure $15.1 million in contracts with these big businesses. And so this whole power-up movement really is just starting, three years old, a whole team dedicated to that. So we’re very it’s excited about the potential that that power up brings.

Brandon Burton (12:38.7)
But

Allen (13:04.834)
small businesses all across all across Spartanburg County. We’ve actually had two hundred and there it is, fourteen hundred inquiries from twenty five states of small businesses that wanted to take advantage of power up and we had to say, you are welcome to do that, but you got to move to Spartanburg County.

Brandon Burton (13:12.696)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (13:16.824)
Well

Brandon Burton (13:25.156)
That’s right. I love that. And man, what an impact. I think you said fifteen point one million in contracts to new local businesses there. And being able to have that money stay in the community versus going, you know, somewhere out of state or maybe overseas for some of those contracts. Who knows where they were fulfilling those contracts before? But that’s a that’s a huge impact in the community. And I love that with each one of these examples.

you have the numbers down to the exact number of businesses that inquired, new businesses that have started, the number of internships that I forgot what the new fancy word was for the internships, but the number of internships that were started or created and and the number of people with the the re-degree. So I’m curious how

how you went about finding the information for redegree to be able to see how many people there were in the community that had some college but not a degree associated with it. Where were you able to look for that that information and and pull that data together?

Allen (14:32.984)
Well, first of all, a a little a little tip, I guess if they wanna call it a tip, maybe it isn’t, but I I believe it is and I always talk to our team about this. You know, you mentioned specific numbers. Well, you know, one of my pet peeves is when somebody says, More than one thousand or over five hundred, you you don’t you don’t seem very credible. And so I tell our team all the time, like, five eight.

Brandon Burton (14:45.121)
Yes.

Brandon Burton (14:51.138)
Yeah.

Allen (14:58.496)
One thousand two hundred and eleven. Like I mean that that shows the hey we’re we’re real time we’re tracking this. So I I just I think you have so much credibility when you use the exact number. So thank thanks for pointing that out. We identified the the redegree number through a talent gap analysis with Lightcast. and we’ve done a talent gap analysis now every two years. they’re not cheap but but they’re well worth it because the talent market in your community is literally changing.

monthly. And so, you know, how can you come up with programs? How can you develop things like edge and redegree if if you really don’t know what the needs are, the opportunities are, the gaps are, so on and so forth. And so one of the things that they pointed out is, hey, you know, you got you if you’re trying to raise education attainment quickly, you got fifty five thousand people that already have some credits in their back pocket. that’s that’s the audience that that you need to be reaching.

Yeah.

Brandon Burton (16:00.183)
So I’m gonna go back to again with the the specifics that you shared. it it goes to tell the story too of the chamber and the impact that you’re making. When you can say that there’s been seventy-four graduates that have completed a a degree through the redegree program.

Those are households that are being changed. It’s life changing to be able to have a degree, to be able to further your career, to change the economic s situation for the families, and to be able to tie dollar amounts back to whether it’s the number of you know contracts that are being brought back through the power up program, it really shows that, you know, without the chamber, what would the community be like?

If if if one Spartanberg Inc. wasn’t there, it would be a huge void and you guys are making a huge impact. So I th the specifics and being able to show that direct impact are are huge. what are we missing with these three programs? I know, I mean, you you hit high level and I know you know you can

probably talk for an hour each on both of these, but what are some of those things that that really stand out as far as the the differences being made and the impact that you’re seeing through these programs?

Allen (17:21.272)
You know, we did we didn’t even speak on and because we didn’t include this as as part of our application and ma you know, maybe we should have, but but last year was a record year for us in terms of new investment, three point five billion dollars in new investment, one thousand one hundred and twenty four new jobs. So, you know, you talk about impacting people and families, one thousand one hundred and twenty four new jobs is is a good is a good measure of that. you know, another another

metric related to power up was our access to space initiative. And that’s not like NASA or going up in space. This is actually action access to physical yeah on the ground physical space. So you know all across America, you know, there’s different municipalities that have boarded up storefronts and and so on and so forth. And and so our access to space initiative, we engaged and again this one’s relatively new, but we engaged

Brandon Burton (18:00.994)
On the ground. Yeah.

Allen (18:21.082)
A lot of those landlords, and we said, hey, look, if if we were to get you a promising tenant and subsidized their lease for six months and then scale it down from seven to twelve, you know, would you be willing to upfit your building? and we’ve had great success in that regard.

Place 12 small businesses in storefronts that quite frankly have been idle for years. And so we see that gaining some steam as well. We’re about we’re about to build a little incubator village at the start of one of our trails in downtown. So think cargo containers with promising small businesses in it, and it’ll be programmed so you know with music and all kinds of different events, so people will be.

Brandon Burton (19:04.002)
Okay.

Allen (19:11.704)
driven to it. So access to space is is just a part of the the general overall offerings of Power Up Spartanbird.

Brandon Burton (19:23.072)
Yeah. I love that idea. The the whole access to space a while back I had a guest on the show and we talked about doing empty building tours to be able to get people out and

visualize the space in some of these empty buildings and but the approach that you’re taking, going directly to the landlord and saying, We can bring somebody to you, if you can make the building something that that could be worthwhile to to host a business in here, we can help make sure that, you know, you’re getting paid, you’re getting your rent and helping to to make that transition, I think, is a very smart way.

Allen (19:55.853)
Yeah, I I tell you y you mentioned people, real people and and and and stories and this is a great story. Puddin, P U D D apostrophe N. this is a guy that had a pudding business, all kinds of different flavors and there was a storefront that that hadn’t seen a tenant in years and it was is literally contiguous to

a a railroad that went right across the main street in one of our smaller towns and the train always, every day clogs traffic, you know, for twenty, twenty five minutes and so we talked to him about this space and I said, You you know, you worry about the the train? He said, No. He had a whole plan for when the cars get backed up by the train, they’ll have somebody out there in the puddin, you know, uniform with order forms, you know, basically cap

Brandon Burton (20:48.63)
Yeah.

Allen (20:49.75)
Customers. So I love that approach and I’m I’m glad we were able to activate that space in Duncan, South Carolina.

Brandon Burton (20:57.484)
That’s awesome. That’s like it’s just like a drive-thru line, right? You just go out and take your order like you’re at Chick-fil-A or something. So Yeah. That’s right. That’s right. I love that example. so what I I like asking on behalf of those listening who are interested in taking their organization up to the next level.

Allen (21:04.258)
Well, but and you didn’t choose to be there. So you’re you’re captive.

Brandon Burton (21:23.414)
What kind of tip or action item might you share with them as they strive to accomplish that goal?

Allen (21:29.676)
Well, I’m humbled that you would ask that question. I mean, we we’ve got a long way to go here, but I I’ve learned I think the difference between good organizations and great organizations in our industry are those that have left activity and moved to performance. You know, we’re not we don’t we don’t well we don’t even have a golf tournament.

we’re not talking about attendance at last month’s event was up. You know, we’re not saying we have more golf tournament sponsors and things like that. That’s those are activities that support the organization, which are important, but you you need to move to performance metrics that support the community. And you know, I I you know, we have that conversation all the time in this building, you know, w

I is this initiative really about, you know, supporting our organization or is this really about supporting our community and the people that live in it and the businesses that are hoping to thrive here? And I understand, you know, you gotta put you gotta put fuel in the tank, you gotta have gas in the car, you gotta drive revenue, understand all those things. but but less of this and more of that and the revenue will come.

Brandon Burton (22:43.446)
Yeah. In fact I just last week did a presentation on that very thing at a chamber conference and we talked about those events and programs often they can be that b to using the engine analogy, kinda like the pull string, you know, think of the lawnmower, i it’s that that initial effort, but then after that you have to show your value, you have to be able to tell the story what the chamber’s doing, drive the impact, and the revenue comes, the sponsorship comes, all those things come.

But like you said, less of less of those things and more of those impactful things that are gonna really make a difference. So I love that you put that out there. I like to ask everyone I have on the show as well about your outlo outlook for the future of Chambers. How do you see the future of Chambers and their purpose going forward?

Allen (23:19.426)
That’s right.

Allen (23:34.595)
That’s a great question. because it’s

We’re in this rapid time of of change and you know, I can I can speak on behalf of of this organization and I and I know that this is the case across the country. You know, those of us in in high growth areas, you know, it’s it’s become very challenging because, you know, you’re viewed it’s a perception it’s not true, but you’re you’re viewed a as the entity driving all the growth and growth is bad.

And so it’s just interesting. Yeah, well exactly. And, you know, in in the book of Revel Revel Revelations it talks about what’s up is down, what’s down is up. And these days seem that way sometimes when you’re when you’re literally

Brandon Burton (24:10.328)
Until it’s not happening. Yeah.

Allen (24:24.946)
defending the creation of jobs. so it it’s a challenging time to to be in this industry, but I think that also speaks to the essential nature of what we do as well. I mean, we we serve the people whether they know it or not. I mean there are thousands, literally thousands of people in our communities that benefit from the work they do, whether they they like us or not, or whether they

know that our work has benefited.

them and their families. I think also think the future of chambers, particularly the standalone ones that don’t have, you know, maybe they don’t have economic development or tourism, it’s in advocacy. I really believe that’s where their relevancy is because you’re in a unique space. You know, if you’re not going to be the voice of business and then who is? And that can be pretty scary because taking a position on an issue is going to win you some friends and it’s going to win you some enemies. But progress never comes without criticism.

criticism and so you can’t be afraid, you know, to get in that space. at the end of the day, you’re the business business community’s only hope. And that’s the way that’s the way I I look at it. You know, I have a I have a little poster that says three hundred and eighty one thousand.

That’s the population of Spartanburg County. That’s I have 381,000 reasons to to do what I do, and and our team thinks about it the the same way. And so, you know, it’s gonna change, the work’s gonna ebb and flow, the external conditions will change, but the essential nature of our organizations I think will remain a constant.

Brandon Burton (26:08.472)
Well, to your point, when you’re helping to spark the the ideas for two thousand five hundred and thirty eight businesses and help stand up fifty six new small businesses and create two hundred and thirty four new jobs and help connect fifteen point one million in contracts with some of these bigger companies. I would argue that

lot of the people in the community don’t know the role that the chamber has to do with that, but it’s driving income into their homes, into their households, it’s creating jobs, it’s providing a lifestyle for them that they wouldn’t have otherwise. So you guys are are making a huge impact, whether or not the average person in the community knows it. But I I think that’s a a great, great response to the future of chambers and need to be driving that growth and in employment.

Helen, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect and learn more about how you guys are doing things there at One Spartan Berg Inc., where would you point them and what would be the best way to connect?

Allen (27:18.158)
Sure. we and again I I’m happy to help. We we don’t have all the answers, but if someone reaches out, maybe we can figure it out together. my email address is asmith@onespartanburginc.com. That’s onespartanburginc.com, not the number. and my phone number is 252-327-0069 and I welcome any feedback, questions, comments, be great.

Brandon Burton (27:48.96)
That’s perfect. We’ll get it all in our show notes and make it easy to connect. But this has been great having you back on the show for those interested in going back and checking out some of the previous episodes.

Allen was on back in episode 136 as a Chamber of the Year finalist when they won Chamber of the Year in in 2021, and also back in episode 107, so back in the early days of the podcast. But he always brings great value to the show. So it’s been a pleasure having you back on today. Thank you for setting aside some time and sharing these great programs and impact that you guys are driving there in the Spartanburg area. Appreciate it.

Allen (28:26.676)
Absolutely. Thank you for the opportunity. And I and I hope I’ve improved each time. I d I don’t know, the jury may still be out.

Brandon Burton (28:31.992)
Leave it to the listeners to find out.

Allen (28:36.78)
That’s right.

If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts, Spotify or now on YouTube. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your feed each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.

Get started with your own Chamber Podcast and shortcut your learning curve with the Chamber Podcast Course offered by Chamber Chat Podcast.
Have you considered the many benefits of hosting a podcast for your Chamber? The options, leverage, and possibilities that a podcast offers are virtually endless. Download my FREE Guide-Podcasting for Chambers to learn how to start your own Chamber podcast!

2026 Chamber of the Year Finalist-Murray-Calloway County Chamber with Michelle Bundren

Miles Burdine Chamber Chat Podcast promo image.

Below is an auto-generated transcription. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.

Feel free to join our Chamber Chat Champions Facebook Group to discuss this episode and to share your own experiences and tips with other Chamber Champions.

Join the Facebook Group

Brandon Burton (00:01.026)
Hello, Chamber Champions! Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and here on the podcast, I introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. You’re joining us for a special episode in our 2026 ACCE Chamber of the Year finalist series. And today we’re joined by Michelle Bundren, President and CEO of the Murray-Calloway County Chamber.

Michelle is a respected chamber leader with more than 11 years of experience in the industry and a strong background in business management. Michelle made history as the first female president and CEO in her organization’s 99 year history. Her leadership has earned national recognition, including ACCE certified chamber executive designation, a distinction held by only a small percentage of chamber professionals nationwide, as well as a four star accreditation.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce. She’s helped lead the award-winning chamber work, including bringing home ACCE’s National Chamber of the Year honor in 2019 and continues to invest in leadership, workforce development, education, and regional collaboration across Kentucky and beyond. But Michelle, I’m excited to have you back on Chamber Chat Podcast, especially under these circumstances. It’s very exciting and big congratulations to you and you and your team.

But I wanted to give you an opportunity to say hello to everybody and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

MIchelle Bundren (01:34.558)
Sure. Well thank you so much for having me back. Obviously we’re we’re really excited to be a finalist again. it’s been what six years. so it’s been a fun and exciting s you know, six years since then. I think just interestingly, I’ve been married for twenty-two years. my husband and I both graduated from Murray State University. We have three children, fixing to be a senior in high school, which is an interesting time.

Brandon Burton (02:04.92)
Yeah.

MIchelle Bundren (02:04.991)
and have a fourteen and twelve year old. So we have teenagers in our house. So I not only do you know work, but obviously that’s a full time job in itself as well. So that’s my season of life. We’re busy with them and we have two miniature dachshunds. We’re huge dog lovers. so we we we stay busy, what can I say?

Brandon Burton (02:25.986)
That’s right. That’s right. I’d forgotten how close our our kids line up pretty closely. We just had one graduate and and we’ve got a a twelve and thirteen year olds so that are still at home. But very good. Well tell us a little bit about your chamber, give us an idea of the size, staff, scope of work you guys are involved with, budget, just kind of set the stage for what you guys are doing today.

MIchelle Bundren (02:54.157)
We are in the far western part of the state of Kentucky. So if you look at us on a map, think far west Kentucky, down in the corner. Our population is about 40,000 in the county. We are anchored with Murray State University, which has made some national headlines over the years with players like Jaw Morant, who’s now in the NBA. And then last year our baseball team made it to the College World Series. So we loved being on the national on the national stage.

Through sports a couple times. Our chamber, we have about 450 chamber members. We represent about 12,000 employees through through that count of businesses. We have three full-time staff and average around a $350,000 to $400,000 budget annually. So Murray, Kentucky itself has been named friendly small town in America, and we were just recently named for

friendliest small college town in America. So we have a lot of national attention for being a small friendly town. and so the chamber’s really excited now to be putting ourselves back again on that national stage.

Brandon Burton (04:08.605)
That’s cool. I love all those opportunities to be able to be on the national stage and be like, that’s us, that’s our town. That’s cool. That is very cool.

MIchelle Bundren (04:15.495)
Yeah, we’re excited. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (04:20.28)
For those listening, if you’re curious and going back in time and and checking out the first episode we did with Michelle, it was actually episode thirty-three as a a Chamber of the Year finalist in twenty nineteen. So that that may be interesting to go back and look at. That was the first year that I did these interviews as the Chamber of the Year finalist. So yeah, come a long ways.

MIchelle Bundren (04:40.399)
okay.

Brandon Burton (04:45.612)
So with these episodes, I like to spend the majority of the time talking about the programs that are submitted on the various chambers applications for Chamber of the Year. So we’ll take a quick break and when we get back, we’ll dive into that and learn more about the impactful work you guys are involved with.

App My Community creates mobile apps that allow you to engage directly with your community. Enhance chamber membership by providing a unique advertising and communication channel to residents and visitors. Not just a member directory, App My Community has the tools to be useful to residents on a daily basis. Learn more at appmycommunity.com/chamberchat.

Brandon Burton (05:04.35)
All right, we are back. As I mentioned before the break, we’ll dive into the program that you guys submitted on your Chamber of the Year application. if you could tell us what what the program is, kind of where the I always like knowing the origins and of course the impact that it’s making in your community.

MIchelle Bundren (05:24.613)
Well, you know, in twenty twenty one we just got through COVID, which was fine. You know, we we won in twenty nineteen, we’re on a high and then twenty twenty and twenty twenty one kinda just took everybody. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (05:29.037)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (05:35.394)
Flat line. Yeah.

MIchelle Bundren (05:37.746)
We realized through those two years that we really weren’t able to help small businesses as much as we’d hoped because we didn’t have a foundation, we didn’t have a five one C three arm to support with other things and ways. so we created it and kind of put the paperwork in motion in twenty one and really started it in twenty twenty two.

Brandon Burton (05:46.99)
Okay.

MIchelle Bundren (06:00.05)
The last two years though we’ve really seen a growth in investments from businesses, really convening people around the table on workforce programs and solutions, and really seeing an excitement around some of our workforce programs. so our synopsis that we put in was about our foundation and the work that we’re doing through the foundation, which is our five one seed three arm. And we decided that our mission starting out with that interest to introduce and educate students.

Brandon Burton (06:26.494)
Right.

MIchelle Bundren (06:30.203)
On opportunities they have to stay local if they decide to have a career here in our region, primarily in our county and city. So that’s what we did. It’s some low-hanging fruit programs of particular that would really help get students to know more about what opportunities are available here. We had some great chambers across Kentucky to be great mentors to us, you know, larger chambers.

Brandon Burton (06:50.592)
Yeah.

MIchelle Bundren (06:59.913)
larger resources we got for them and kind of hear what they were doing and we started for eighth grade career exploration with them called Spark because we wanted to spark a career interest in a student maybe and how to make it stay here local. We introduced that to two school districts. Now we have four school districts attending it’s over 500 students that are involved in coming and we have over 30 businesses about 40 businesses sitting up with about

Brandon Burton (07:00.814)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Brandon Burton (07:13.686)
Yeah.

We should have some.

MIchelle Bundren (07:29.843)
90 plus experiences that they can get introduced to career opportunities happening here in our region. We also started a teacher externship program, which is called Lyft Leadership Initiative for Teachers. We take teachers from each school district, we have two here, and put them through an externship program where it helps them get resources they need and connections they need with businesses. And then we help them better be better prepared to go back in the classroom.

Brandon Burton (07:40.43)
Well very much the actual eighth one.

MIchelle Bundren (07:59.716)
To prepare their students for careers in the future. We’ve seen some amazing conversations come out of that. one of them connected to the hospital and has now created this program and shadowing with some of their students and class, you know, their classes can go to the hospital and it’s really created a great partnership that they never would have had without the connection that we helped create through that program. and then, you know, there was partnership on a with our university on a kind of

Brandon Burton (08:25.275)
Yeah, okay.

MIchelle Bundren (08:29.609)
Of an after-school program for females interested in engineering. That was all an exciting idea that came out of the class that’s now coming to fruition. That we just really helped connect the people and then got out of the way and let them create kind of those connections and furthering students’ opportunities. So that’s some of the exciting outcomes. And then even just through our Spark, one of our school districts only had 10 to 15 students going into our area technology center, which is where they learn about trades, electrical.

Brandon Burton (08:45.688)
Mm.

MIchelle Bundren (08:59.559)
plumbing, welding, things like that. After our program, the year the next year they had over a hundred students enrolled in the program, you know, from ten to thirteen. so we’re really educating and introducing students to those opportunities. We’ve been seniors, high school seniors, we reach about four hundred of those a year, getting them ready for the jobs that they could get in May in May if they don’t know kind of what their career path is. So we’ve had lots of successful programs. I only see them growing

Brandon Burton (09:04.436)
Yeah, sure.

Yeah.

MIchelle Bundren (09:29.679)
And our investors have grown the past two years. We had just a handful, and now we have, you know, probably twenty-five investors and people around the table helping us make these decisions. So it’s been very exciting and been something I’m very passionate about the last couple years.

Brandon Burton (09:43.567)
I love that. So I I was gonna come back to that and ask about the the funding side of the foundation because as you notice through COVID, the impact that a foundation can have and if you’re positioned right to be able to deploy those funds in the community. so aside from grants, are you I I assume you’re you’re going after grants for some of this as well. but what’s the positioning like for the

to try to find the funding to get people to invest in the workforce development throughout your county.

MIchelle Bundren (10:19.067)
We actually have had no grants so far. This is all Yeah. It’s all been funded through business local business leaders. You know, we really convened them to the table to hear what their issues were. It was, you know, we don’t feel like students are prepared for the jobs that we, you know, have. And then we convened with the schools and it was like, What are you seeing? and really brought both to the table. we meet about once a quarter now, bringing just various industries together.

Brandon Burton (10:22.277)
really? Okay. Very cool.

MIchelle Bundren (10:49.589)
And really they’ve all stepped up to invest. we raise about fifty thousand plus annually through them currently to manage and kind of organize our programs. Plus we have sponsors, additional sponsors that help lead the different programs as well. So we’re running a pretty strong budget so far to to do these kind of year over year. Yes, we’ll be looking at grant opportunities to really increase our programming and really help us be more.

profitable right now kind of just funding the work that we do currently but they’ve all are invested and eager to help go get other businesses involved because we really have shown them and the return on investment that they really are getting work done for the money that they’re putting in and it’s impactful to the students. So that’s been very exciting.

Brandon Burton (11:21.229)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (11:44.151)
Yeah, no, that is that’s great that you haven’t had to go after grants yet, but obviously opportunities there. so you have these investors that invest in the foundation, but then you mentioned with each actual event you have individual sponsors that help make those events come together. So th there’s additional funding that comes into that. So that’s great. so you you talked about gathering them together at the table from

MIchelle Bundren (11:48.039)
Not yet.

Brandon Burton (12:13.826)
the different employment sectors in the schools. So I’m c I’m always curious from the schools. Who are you getting? Is it the superintendent? Is it those who are involved with writing the curriculum for the schools? certain teachers, how how do you go about getting that side to come to the table?

MIchelle Bundren (12:32.935)
So we c first convened our guidance counselors and ’cause you know, businesses were saying students aren’t prepared. So we went to the schools and said, Hey, businesses are saying students aren’t prepared you know, to which they would say we are preparing them.

Brandon Burton (12:40.973)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (12:49.041)
Right.

MIchelle Bundren (12:49.437)
So we created sort of what we call a roadmap. Okay, where K through twelve are they receiving some kind of workforce connection or education? And so we looked to see where those holes were. That meeting was with guidance counselors. So we saw eighth grade was a great opportunity, juniors and seniors were a great opportunity. and then our teacher program really hits K through twelve. so those were kind of how we figured out the strategy of programs and initiatives.

And where to hit. Our board for our foundation is made up of the assistant superintendent at one school district, and they’re very much involved in the curriculum. Actually, I got an email last week asking them to for us to come look at a new software program and curriculum they’re looking at because there’s a whole engagement on business community resources, and they want us at the table in that conversation. So that’s been encouraging. So, yes, we discussed current.

Brandon Burton (13:43.798)
That’s awesome.

MIchelle Bundren (13:49.321)
curriculum. They went with us on our DC fly in last year to meet with the US Chamber. We’re very impressed by

they have a four chambers, you know, for education partnerships. and our superintendent and our assistant superintendent went on that trip. So th that’s who’s at the table when it comes to the to the school district. So that’s been really great to have the leadership at the top adjusting and knowing what’s going on throughout the schools.

Brandon Burton (14:04.362)
Yeah,

Brandon Burton (14:22.018)
So you had mentioned one of these programs that has come out through the foundation was this teacher externship. I d I find that to be very curious. I’d like to learn more about what that looks like and how you get the teachers in the businesses and what the how is that structured.

MIchelle Bundren (14:39.027)
we met with a couple teachers who were a little bit jealous of our leadership program. You know, they couldn’t come to stuff because it’s kind of during the day. And you know, we heard from them, you know, we would love something similar. And then we’d heard from the business, you know, and this kind of foundation board, you know, we need to reach kids. And so we were like, well, why don’t we create a teacher program? we looked at some other models and the teacher externship we created was basically they apply and we took

Brandon Burton (14:46.166)
Yeah.

MIchelle Bundren (15:08.681)
Take you know, several the same amount from each school district. And K through twelve industry, any kind of subject matter.

And the sponsorship covers the substitute teacher for the day so that the school district doesn’t have to worry about that. and then all the program materials and the transportation and all that is raised through sponsorships. so the businesses are engaged. At the end of it, we have a business education round table where we talk about what they learned and then get feedback from both. but basically it’s five sessions. We do an initial session to get to know them and talk about the resources and things.

things that they need to get out of the program. And then we connect them throughout the next few months to businesses. We take them to our manufacturers, we take them to the hospital, we take them to different industry sectors. And and the conversation is careers. what all careers are available, what talents and passions do they need to help connect their students, you know, with the interests that maybe, you know, they have of that talent. and so that’s kind of how we structured it.

Brandon Burton (15:50.99)
Yeah, so

MIchelle Bundren (16:17.553)
And then the substitute teacher thing has been critical because it’s already hard for the already. so the fact that we help the sponsorship help study that it’s been really

Brandon Burton (16:20.078)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (16:27.625)
Yeah, I could see that being a little bit of friction of well, who’s gonna cover for me when I’m gone, right? but I also wondered if if it might take place during the summer sometime or you know, but they probably want to do it when they’re being paid. I don’t know, there’s all the different nuances to it, but

MIchelle Bundren (16:30.734)
Yes.

MIchelle Bundren (16:45.051)
We kinda line it up with our business series with our chamber. So they attend our our lunches. you know, they get to meet and hear from and those and then they elect a class leader. So when they graduate, it’ll be that last

Brandon Burton (16:48.365)
Yeah.

MIchelle Bundren (16:58.339)
I think it’s our November lunch. They s we have a class person come and speak and talk about their experience and what they learned and we give certificates and and all that. So we really have tried to give them that platform at even our chamber events to get their voice because they want to feel heard, you know, as educators. Sometimes they feel tucked in the classroom and they are key leaders in our community and and the chamber’s really been able to bring them out and help them get the exposure and attention they need.

Brandon Burton (17:25.804)
Yeah. And I assume that the the end outcome is having them promote these different job opportunities throughout the community to their students in the classroom. So as they talk about the things that they learned, what kind of things are they sharing that they take back to the classroom or what what are some of their takeaways?

MIchelle Bundren (17:47.058)
Sure. So a lot of the students really kind of know what their parents do. You know, so taking the teachers to the manufacturing facility, for example, and hearing that, you know, maybe they hear from their students that mom and dad work on the line or, you know, whatever, they don’t know that there’s a whole administrative team or a whole HR team or logistics team. so what they’re hearing from our businesses is and even in healthcare, you know, there’s a whole administrative side to it. There’s you don’t have to

Be a doctor, there’s nurses, and then there’s radiology, and there’s all these different skill levels and jobs out there that the teachers themselves didn’t even know exist. and so if they go out of the classroom and actually experience it and hear from it, they leave with connections and resources for the students. Maybe there’s internship or job shadowing opportunities that now they know about and have seen and heard and have the connection to the HR manager or whatever, they can now go back in and help their students connect.

To those opportunities and connect to those businesses. We’ve seen a lot of success. I know our next step will definitely be connecting more job shadowing opportunities, which will be critical to have the teachers and the schools involved in that. But that’s some of the things that we’ve heard is, you know, you know, they don’t have the resources or know who to contact sometimes to bring in guest speakers to their classroom. And now they’ve said they have a lot of people, business, you know, now that we’ve created that connection, they have those expertise.

Experts coming into their classroom, or they’re creating their own kind of externship with their students where they’re taking a handful who are maybe interested in healthcare and now connecting them to the radiology department. I say that because that’s one particular area of need we have here in Murray is radiology. Now you see the scholarship opportunities that maybe the the students see.

Brandon Burton (19:33.838)
Yeah.

MIchelle Bundren (19:46.784)
didn’t know about and now this the teachers have all that information that they can bring back in the classroom to help one on one champion their students to pick a career path that’s perfect or the best fit for them. and so that’s been a a huge outcome for us is just having people they respect and love, the teachers, be a role model for them in kind of shaping their future.

Brandon Burton (20:10.734)
So when I was growing up, my dad was in pharmaceuticals. So he was always coming home talking about the new drug that he was pushing, you know, that he’s selling. So when I was in third grade, we did the whole, you know, what do your parents do for work? And all I knew is that my dad sold drugs. So that that spurred a a phone call home. And I’m glad that I got other exposure to other industries so I didn’t have to follow

MIchelle Bundren (20:29.021)
I’m sure.

MIchelle Bundren (20:35.259)
That’s good. Yeah. So I’m sure that was very interesting for the teachers to hear.

Brandon Burton (20:36.736)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (20:41.6)
Right. Yeah. Yeah. So but yeah, having that exposure to the different opportunities is is so crucial because you’re right. Most of them only know what their parents do. And even at that, they don’t really know the extent of what it is that their parents do. They just know what what gets shared and what what gets talked about in the home. is there anything else from the foundation that you want to highlight and make sure that that you get to shine some light on?

MIchelle Bundren (21:11.349)
I just think if you have if your chamber hasn’t gotten into workforce development work, it really is rewarding and it really is what businesses need. you know, we talk a lot about succession plans and in our community and business, and it’s really an investment in your future to make sure you have that workforce talent developed for the future. I know a lot of times us chambers, we like to do promotion and ribbon cuttings and celebrations. and this is kind of the lesser sexy work, I guess, that you could call it.

It but it really is the most critical for our community that their businesses are preparing for the future workforce. And so that’s been really big for us to help kind of get our businesses to understand what we’re doing to help that this really is a business issue. instead of us just wanting to be in the schools all the time. You know, it’s really a long game plan and strategy.

Brandon Burton (22:00.217)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (22:08.478)
And I like to think of it as the workforce development is really what changes lives of the individuals that are going to be the employees, but also the employers and the impact they can how they can better serve the the community and be more of an impact themselves throughout the community. So it’s important work. so I like to ask for those listening for a tip or action item to

Help those listening who want to take their organization up to the next level, what might you offer for them?

MIchelle Bundren (22:43.483)
Hmm, trying to take it up to the next level. I think one thing that’s been critical for us and it’s been really not easy, even with our board, you know, we used to kind of sit here at the office and wait for business to happen or come to us. and really it’s a shift in our organization. You know, we are out and about a lot. we’re not sitting here waiting for phone calls. We’ve kind of invested in technology as much as we can to be present.

or available through technology, you know, either ring camera or, you know, phone, laptop, all those things. But the idea for us is if we’re not out connecting with people or or doing something, you know, that’s the best use of our time is to be out doing something, not sitting here at the office waiting for a phone call. that’s taking a shift because you know I think sometimes people they’re not in the office, they’re not working.

Brandon Burton (23:40.782)
Yeah.

MIchelle Bundren (23:41.318)
That’s definitely not true. And that’s for a small town like us, it’s a shift because that’s not the model that we’ve had for ninety nine years of business. but for us it’s we’re known for those connections. We’re known for who who the company we keep used to be a tagline of ours way back in the day. and so I really do think that we you’ve gotta kinda think bigger picture with with some of the work that we’re doing for small chambers, one staff, two staff, three staff.

it’s don’t just sit there in the office and kind of feel like you have to man the office. Get out there and build connections and make things happen. and that’s what we’ve seen a lot of success with the last couple of years.

Brandon Burton (24:24.856)
Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense, but it is a perception shift to be able to get that imaging out there and and part of that, I mean, social media can be helpful with that when you can show your members what you’re doing and that you’re out connecting with others and and doing all that. well, Michelle, you may remember from last time, but I like asking everyone I have on the show about how you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward.

MIchelle Bundren (24:55.489)
god I yeah, you sent me this and I was trying to think about it. and we talked about it a little bit, but I think just the idea that chambers just host parades and festivals and events y and and things like that are really not the future of chambers. It’s definitely

convening conversations. We’re we’re great greatly positioned for that because we’re kinda neutral politically and local government, business, education, you know, nonprofits. We work a lot with nonprofits and we’re kind of greatly situated to really convene conversations around critical issues. and you really as a chamber have to kind of put yourself there and really step out and lead in that in that way and kind of make yourself

Hey, I want to be at the table of this. Like let’s put get the chamber at the table. Cause a lot of small chambers I work with, ’cause you know, I’m really connected to ones in Kentucky, they’re bored and their community doesn’t view their chamber as an organization that can do more than just ribbon cuttings or more than just a celebration, like I said.

Brandon Burton (25:50.744)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (26:07.052)
Just crazy. Why are you on the board then, right?

MIchelle Bundren (26:09.121)
I know. they just like it to be on the resume or they’re just happy with what what’s always been. but and then sometimes they’re nervous. I get that. I think when they think policy, they think politics and it’s messy and

But really that’s that’s the future is sitting at the table with community leaders, helping solve problems, and you know, making sure the resources are there and any role the chamber can play in helping connect or bring people around a critical issue is really important. there’s always things going on and I think sometimes we’re like, Well, what does the chamber think about it?

It’s sometimes that’s a great question and we should have a voice and sometimes it’s a situation we can stay out of. but the fact that they’re asking our opinion or asking us is means that they value what we do and who we are, ’cause we are the business community. We’re the voice of business. and so we we don’t take that lightly. but we’re so much more than just, you know, meeting for fellowship with the board and eating of lunch together and

you know, me having an event, it’s it’s definitely more than that. And so if you can as a chamberleader, and I’m speaking with small chambers here, really help your board cast a vision for being more, then that’s a really big deal and a really step a big step forward for them.

Brandon Burton (27:34.156)
Yeah, absolutely. I love that answer. Michelle, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and connect and learn more about how you guys are doing things there at the the Murray-Calloway County Chamber. Where would you point them and what would be the best way to connect?

MIchelle Bundren (27:51.881)
Sure. you can always email me, michelle@mymurray.com. I you can call our office 270-753-5171. But definitely email. I’ll get it on my phone and all the places. So I I stay pretty connected to that.

Brandon Burton (28:19.592)
Very good. We’ll get that in our show notes to make it nice and easy. But I think it’s fantastic that you guys are putting in the work to be selected as a Chamber of the Year finalist again. And I wish you guys the best of luck.

MIchelle Bundren (28:34.088)
Thank you. I really appreciate it.

If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts, Spotify or now on YouTube. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your feed each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.

Get started with your own Chamber Podcast and shortcut your learning curve with the Chamber Podcast Course offered by Chamber Chat Podcast.
Have you considered the many benefits of hosting a podcast for your Chamber? The options, leverage, and possibilities that a podcast offers are virtually endless. Download my FREE Guide-Podcasting for Chambers to learn how to start your own Chamber podcast!

2026 Chamber of the Year Finalist-El Paso Chamber with Ricardo Mora

Miles Burdine Chamber Chat Podcast promo image.

Below is an auto-generated transcription. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.

Feel free to join our Chamber Chat Champions Facebook Group to discuss this episode and to share your own experiences and tips with other Chamber Champions.

Join the Facebook Group

Brandon Burton (00:01.109)
Hello, Chamber Champions! Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and here on the podcast I introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. You’re joining us for a special episode in our 2026 ACCE Chamber of the Year Finalist series. And today we’re joined by Ricardo Mora.

President and CEO of the El Paso Chamber of Commerce. Ricardo has built a dynamic career in the intersection of entrepreneurship, regional development, and cross-border collaboration, launching and managing ventures across real estate, telecommunications, venture capital, and hospitality. Now leading the El Paso Chamber, he’s focused on strengthening binational relationships and advancing the borderplex region as a hub for innovation, commerce, and economic growth.

With deep roots in interconnected economies of El Paso, Las Cruces, and Ciudad Juárez Ricardo brings a unique perspective on what it takes to build opportunity across borders. He uses the chamber’s platform to foster collaboration, support business growth, and position the region as a competitive center for trade and investment. Beyond his work with the chamber, Ricardo has also supported STEAM education and workforce development.

Development through Fundacion Axcel AC helping prepare the next generation for jobs and industries of the future. Fluent in both Spanish and English, Ricardo is a connector, advocate, and community builder dedicated to creating partnerships that drive long term prosperity for the region. Ricardo, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. Congratulations to you and your team for being selected as a Chamber of the Year finalist. I’d love to give you an opportunity

To say hello to all the listeners, and if you would, to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Ricardo Mora (02:01.87)
Well, thank you, Brandon. It’s we’re very excited and thrilled to be part of the finalist for this your great award. Just being a finalist to us is has meant so much to our team. We’re we’re just thrilled to to our existence being part of it. And something interesting about myself that I’d share with you that might be unique is that being part of this cross-border community is is quite different than most would understand.

Brandon Burton (02:09.404)
If you have the save those two pieces, too much.

Ricardo Mora (02:29.942)
And I actually lived in Mexico, which is a five minute drive across the border for about thirty five years and commuted back and forth to school. And this is both communities are really tied by the hip. So that’s come kinda something unique that some people don’t understand. That when you live on a cross border community like El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, it’s the same thing. All that that really is between us is a couple of just a bridge. You get right across and have lunch in one country and have

Brandon Burton (02:56.811)
Yeah.

Ricardo Mora (02:59.8)
Dinner in the other one. So that’s something cool about this this area and about myself.

Brandon Burton (03:05.193)
It’s blown me away as I’ve gone through El Paso, you know, multiple times that you can just look out your window as you drive by. You see Mexico right there. And it very it is very close and very much a cross border town. So I I’m sure the work is very much unique to you guys versus other in other places in the country.

Well, if you would tell us a little bit more about the El Paso chamber, help give us an idea of the size of the chamber, staff, budget, scope of work you guys are involved with to kind of set the stage for our discussion today.

Ricardo Mora (03:42.529)
Sure. So the El Paso Chamber is a 127-year organization. it has been here through since 1899. we currently run a staff of 17 folks on our team, and they’re all high, effective leaders, really hitting on all all cylinders. our annual budget is around 2.6 million dollars, and and we service the cross-border community. So the chamber unites businesses, government, and

Brandon Burton (04:09.333)
The change is

Ricardo Mora (04:12.054)
and community leaders who advocate for growth, champion innovation, and create sustainable prosperity across our entire region. And we do that through three main pillars economic development and innovation, public policy and government relations, and infrastructure and transportation.

Brandon Burton (04:13.215)
Is it here?

have an innovation and create sustainable.

Brandon Burton (04:30.837)
I just want to

Very good. It sounds like you’ve you’ve you’ve given that presentation a few times, right? Of what the mission of the chamber is and those pillars and that that work you guys are involved with. Can tell it’s part of your being.

Ricardo Mora (04:46.542)
We’re all it is, it is. It’s so important to know what you’re doing and where you’re going. We love it.

Brandon Burton (04:52.661)
Yes, absolutely. Well, that definitely will help set the stage for our discussion today. As we do these Chamber of the Year finalist series, we like to spend the majority of our time talking about the programs that were submitted on your Chamber of the Year application. So as soon as we get back from this quick break, we’ll dive into those programs and learn more of those details.

App My Community creates mobile apps that allow you to engage directly with your community. Enhance chamber membership by providing a unique advertising and communication channel to residents and visitors. Not just a member directory, App My Community has the tools to be useful to residents on a daily basis. Learn more at appmycommunity.com/chamberchat.

All right, Ricardo, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, that we’re gonna dive into the the two programs that were on your chamber of the year application. I know one of them has to do with the infrastructure project with the the Bridge of the Americas. Would you like to start there with that project or that program and tell us what it’s about and what all it involves?

Ricardo Mora (05:35.983)
Of course. Of course. So in our community, here in El Paso, Texas, on the Texas side, we have three ports of entry that allow commercial capacity to cross back and forth for production. Our community is known for manufacturing and logistics heavily. There’s 350 manufacturing facilities, 70 Fortune 500 companies here, and

So it’s it’s a it’s a big thing for us as we understand commerce in our community or cross border trade is equivalent to commerce. So as the Chamber of Commerce for El Paso, we believe in cross border trade. And every minute that trade does not get through a cross border entry, it really hinders our entire economy, it locally and also on the national level. So I’ll take you back a little bit.

And the Bridge of the Americas was a port that was started. It’s it’s about sixty years old. It is a federal bridge, it is owned by the federal government, it is owned by the general services administration, and like all ports of entries, they are it’s administered by CBP and Homeland Security. Those are the folks that are there day and night. through the Biden Bipartisan Act, there was seven hundred million dollars allocated close to five years ago.

For modernization of this particular bridge and others across the country. There was a bill that passed for about $3.4 billion, and one of our bridges got selected to be modernized. Although last year, through a record of decision by the General Services Administration, there is a formal record of decision to remove commercial traffic from this Bridge of the Americas. And this Bridge of the Americas today is still operating.

it has car vehicles that go north and they go south. it has pedestrians that cross both ways. And it also has cargo that goes to the north and then cargo or or empty trucks that cross southbound for our production model here in in in El Paso and Ciudad Juarez. And for us, when we understood that the record of decision was to remove commercial traffic, this particular port has six booths.

Ricardo Mora (07:58.233)
Where trucks drive up and there’s six inspection booths. if we look at the next bridge we have, it’s called Zaragoza Isleta, and that one has eight, and that is on the east side. And there’s a farther booth that is a brand new bridge called Tornillo. that one has three, but one only operational. It’s about 60 minutes to get there. And on the Mexican side, there’s hardly any infrastructure. So it’s a future project. If you add those 15

Areas where trucks can take their paperwork, deleting or eliminating the ones at Bridge of the Americas at six really hinders us close to 40% reduction of our capacity to cross goods. And that is when the chamber said, listen, we really need to step up and understand that cross-border trade is commerce in our community. And there’s many lives that depend on this.

So for every three jobs across the border in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico, there’s one job on the El Paso side. That is about a hundred and ten thousand jobs that will be affected by this d record of decision if it comes to fruition. So from the chamber perspective, it’s been a difficult challenge for us, but we also represent many businesses. We have over seven hundred businesses that rely on us that really come together.

Brandon Burton (09:15.063)
I don’t know.

Ricardo Mora (09:23.648)
And and and we are vocal for them to allow them to have a voice at the local, state and federal level. So we’re very concerned about competitiveness as most chambers are across the country. Currently, El Paso is at about sixty seven percent of the national per capita income average. If we move back about thirty years ago, El Paso was one of the lowest cities per capita income in the nineties.

Brandon Burton (09:29.857)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Brandon Burton (09:53.577)
Yeah.

Ricardo Mora (09:53.577)
And removing this commercial capability of an infrastructure that’s existing, it’ll make our city less competitive. when we started studying the process, we learned that the record of decision states that GSA did not take into account the positive or negative effects of removing commercial cargo to the trucking industry, to the manufacturing industry.

Brandon Burton (10:10.583)
GSA did not have negative.

Ricardo Mora (10:22.422)
Or to businesses. It states it on the NIPA study, a very small study that they did around the bridge. And they said this did not include an economic impact study, but could be done at a different time. So, as understanding what we’re doing to the chamber, we’ve commissioned a full-blown economic impact analysis study that we believe it’s an independent study will show the negative effects of removing.

Brandon Burton (10:25.481)
All right, so I’ll tell you.

Ricardo Mora (10:50.902)
40% capacity to our competitiveness as a region. And we’re just blown away by these decisions that are being made, not taking into account the business community. Today we’re over 250 businesses that are part of a coalition behind us, very active. and we’re pushing our narrative to be able to keep commercial traffic at Bridge of the Americas.

Brandon Burton (11:03.391)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (11:07.671)
So what stage are you in with that with the economic impact study? Is it in the early stages, or are you guys in the the middle of it? How

Ricardo Mora (11:25.326)
We would be in the middle of it. we’re expecting to have the economic impact analysis findings by the first week of July. But hold on, June no August, I’m sorry. First week of August. So yeah, July is just around the corner. And and we’ll see what happens there. I know that the Hunt Institute for Global Competitiveness is doing this economic impact study at the University of Texas at El Paso. And and we’ll see what that means. there is also gonna be a positive effect.

Brandon Burton (11:34.591)
Okay. Yes.

Ricardo Mora (11:54.349)
Because the current remodel of modernization is calling for about 30 to 35 car lanes going northbound. Today we have about 15 only. So it would be just basically a lot of vehicles heading northbound. And that would definitely have a positive effect on retail and other industries. However, we believe strongly that since manufacturing and cross-border trade and logistics is so important to our community.

We can’t let that infrastructure project continue. And right now it’s on phase two of the process through the GSA. Basically, they did the record of decision is one, and process number two is there in an RFP to solicit the work to be done, and supposedly it’d be another six months before that RFP is awarded, which will take him to step three of the five step process.

Brandon Burton (12:28.864)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (12:51.689)
Okay.

So my mind goes around to to what all can a chamber do, you know, in a situation like this with the with the bridge and it obviously advocacy is gonna be heavy, right? Getting in front of the right decision makers and being able to to try to influence, but doing this economic impact study as well is gonna be key to being able to have that evidence to back up the arguments that you guys are making. are there other approaches from a chamber standpoint that you can do to to further stand

And make your stance as far as the the impact that it makes to the the local and national economy.

Ricardo Mora (13:30.255)
Well, we we are doing other things. we are convening normally at least once a month our membership. we bring experts to talk about these facts. Any new members that come into the chamber as well. I personally have a chance to speak to them about this cross-border situation that we’re dealing with. And we do find a path forward. I mean, our path forward and our formal ask at the at the state and at the federal level is to pause the implementation.

of this record of decision and allow this decision to be data based on the economic impact analysis. As community members, I would encourage anybody that is dealing with similar issues and maybe not a cross-border international crossing, but anything that is hindering commerce, it’s the chamber’s responsibility. And we have to fight for it. And and I would share that, you know, sometimes we’re not on the same page

Brandon Burton (14:23.02)
Yeah.

Ricardo Mora (14:28.844)
With some of our elected officials. we admire all the work they do and they’re out there doing it. But from an economic side, we need we are really being standing our position that this is not going to be good for our community in the long run. And we just don’t want supply chains to move, relocate, and a lot of things could happen in the future if we don’t get this one right.

Brandon Burton (14:53.289)
Right. And you know, to your point with the elected officials, you know, they they come into office with a limited point of view. They have a limited scope of of understanding and you know, th many of them are very intelligent people, very smart people.

But they get there with only the knowledge they know. And they need chambers like yours to be able to advocate for the local economies and for the the infrastructure and everything else that that takes place and be able to shine a light on it and say, Hey, what you’re doing may have good intentions, but here’s some side effects that are are happening from this as well. well let’s let’s

switch topics now if if if you’re good with that to your second program on your Chamber of the Year application. do you you would like to introduce that to us and tell us what it’s all about?

Ricardo Mora (15:46.691)
Of course. So as any city that that is expanding, and anybody that potentially has not visited El Paso, Texas, we’re on the west tip of Texas, very just right next to New Mexico. Texas, the largest state in the US, Chihuahua, the largest state in Mexico, and we really convene three states and two countries.

And and in our process as a city, a lot of people that drive by by El Paso, there’s I-10. And I-10 goes from east to west and it goes both ways. So Text Dot Text Dot has a project, it already has a phase of part of the project. It’s a $1.4 billion project to make I-10 wider down at at it will start at downtown, which is

We have about seven bridges that connect our downtown to the north part of town. And this is today it’s called elevate the ten. But Techstot is coming in, they’re doing this regardless. The funding is there already to do it. So out of the 1.4 billion, 500 billion are already allocated, the design and the engineering is already on on its way. And as a community, we came together to say, listen.

This is the best opportunity for El Paso to have, instead of having six bridges and a wider highway on both sides, you know, five lanes and five lanes on the other one. Right now we have three downtown. Why don’t we build a cap on top of it? And this will be a green space, like Clyde Warren Park in Dallas that will allow investment, that would allow growth for downtown and

And we’re we’re working together with with the El Paso Foundation, the Deck Foundation, alongside other partners. currently, we’re very excited that we have been making progress and again uniting businesses, government, and community leaders to really understand the impact that this can have on future generations. And this is an impact that is not just, you know, we want to put a cap on it. so as a community, we’re we’ve come together and the community has been able to raise

Ricardo Mora (18:06.306)
About $75 million of a project that is estimated to cost about $207 million in 2027 dollars. But it’s important that the timing is done right because Text Ot is coming anyways. They’re gonna start their construction and we need to be ready to be to do the engineering work, to making sure that we have the columns. As of now, we look very good. It’s moving forward and and making sure that we have the right structure to hold this.

this deck park. We’re super excited about it. And and El Paso it is growing east and it is also growing west and to the northeast. But it is, as you know, downtowns are vibrant and and many downtowns require the heartbeat to be very strong. so so we’re tracking, I mean it’s a huge investment and an outlay for our community. We’re tracking over yeah over a billion dollars in the next thirty years of of of actual

you know, funding for this project that will bring in revenue and and also one to one point five million visitors to El Paso. And we’re just thrilled to be able to form our city.

Brandon Burton (19:13.601)
Yeah. That’s great. But and it’s nice to be able to have examples like Clyde Warren Park in Dallas to be able to look at and see, you know, what does this do for a downtown? What does this do for local economy? What does this do for just the overall

you know, feel and vibe for a city where you can have art and cultural things and being able to to really drive interest to the downtown. I think it’s a a great example. I assume you guys are working with engineers and you know people doing studies to figure out these dollar amounts of what needs to be raised to make this happen. Is that is that something that the chamber takes on, are you working with the city on that, or how does that come together?

Ricardo Mora (19:56.409)
So so it it takes a long time for this to drive, and obviously it is a public private partnership. So recently our city and our county signed the memorandum of understanding to make sure that we’re all working together towards this larger goal. And and then on the on on putting it together, there’s really a lot of meetings that go on in our community. And there’s a lot of concerns as well that need need to be addressed from c our, you know, the entire community about taxes and about

maintenance on this project. So so something important to share is that yes there have been studies. There’s been studies of of other places that have had this and the economic downdrafts of having these type of projects present in a community and we just wouldn’t want to miss the opportunity. this proposed like I mentioned this proposed deck park would be about a six mile deck park that would bring

Brandon Burton (20:27.66)
Yeah.

Ricardo Mora (20:53.834)
Over 1.5 million visitors to our community that would go to local restaurants, that would go to the hotels, that would visit our great mountains and and track all that. And there are studies that show the positive effect of having this. So we are working with our local engineering firms. And it is so so funny you mentioned that because one of our pillars is infrastructure and transportation. And on infrastructure and transportation.

Brandon Burton (21:19.467)
There you go.

Ricardo Mora (21:22.956)
The El Paso Chamber hosts a coalition that is called the El Paso Mobility Coalition. And within this coalition, we see everything that is infrastructure and transportation, whether it’s the I-10 widening, the deck park, what’s happening on international bridges, what’s happening in New Mexico, anything that has to do with infrastructure projects or loop projects, we’re very engaged.

So studies are have shown that by doing this, it’ll allow our community to move forward and scale as a community of our size would, as we need this infrastructure moving forward. So we’re very excited to be part of it. I have a 15-year-old daughter that I want to grow and and she’ll go to college and come back and and see her community, I don’t know, 10 years later, really modified and and and and now thinking that.

The time that I’m here at the chamber and what our team is doing alongside other key partners is making that effect. We’re looking for long term for our community to really be proud of something we were part of.

Brandon Burton (22:28.725)
Yeah. So you bring up a good point of i i it it’s a great vision to have, but there are those things that you need to overcome where people have questions about who’s gonna pay for this, who’s gonna pay for the maintenance and the taxes and so how do you confront that it within the community to be able to

put people’s minds at ease and be able to to show the positive impact that this will have on the city instead of just a a a negative is I I see it all being positive, but I can see where the concerns might come up.

Ricardo Mora (23:00.202)
No, and that’s a great question. So as this began happening, this is several years ago, the there is a definite concern about the community. Alone we’re tracking about five million dollars a year to maintain this actual infrastructure project. but through private public partnership, there was there’s a foundation that was established for this particular project called the Downtown Plaza organization.

That is the organization that has taken the lead and will fund the project and will fund the maintenance. So in the initial conversations, the citizens’ concerns were like, is this going to raise our taxes? Is it going to go on the city budget? How is this really going to affect us? So by this private public partnership and by being part of it, you start getting a little bit of clarity on this overcast sky.

Where people start understanding, okay, so this is really for the good of our community. And we’ll be able to take, you know, for example, this recent announcement is to build an amazing dock park downtown. And it’s a million dollar investment from one of our local community car dealerships that has long been standing here in El Paso. And I don’t know if you know, but El Paso downtown has a magnificent baseball stadium called the Chihuahua Stadium.

Brandon Burton (24:07.414)
Yeah.

Ricardo Mora (24:22.86)
And you can actually take your dog to the park. So so this is quality of life. And I know I’m kind of getting a little bit out of that, but just sharing how our downtown really embraces and how we work through this as a community on open forums and conversations. So I feel very confident that that with our partnership with the Decktown Plaza Foundation, the city, the county, and the businesses, this will get built.

Brandon Burton (24:25.426)
Awesome.

Brandon Burton (24:52.031)
I love that. I love the vision. I love the the influence you guys are showing as well in the community of being able to to see these projects through and answer questions along the way as you convene the right people and and make sure that the ball’s moving forward. as we begin to wrap things up, I wanted to ask you for those listening, for

a tip or action item that you might share with those listening who are interested in taking their organization up to the next level. What would you suggest for them?

Ricardo Mora (25:25.398)
I would suggest to any any other chamber across the country to know that you have a voice. And the voice that you represent truly represents a body of members that you’re driving progress for. And in our case, our value proposition is very simple. We are business-centric. We are we serve our businesses. It is we are a membership-based organization.

So as long as we keep track of that and we know we’re serving our businesses, you have a voice and your voice needs to be heard. So I’m I’m ecstatic about sharing to everybody that don’t feel that you need to, you know, be quiet on topics that you know you have to speak on because everybody in their own community has a challenge like a bridge of the Americas that requires our ch we’re challenging the federal government, and it’s okay.

We live in this beautiful country and we have access to do that and we are the right voice to do it. So I would just encourage all the chambers to take their voice and make sure that they’re they’re aligned to their mission and their vision. And don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid because we can we can move things forward with what we’re trying to push together as chambers.

Brandon Burton (26:42.229)
Yeah, that is one of the great things about being in America, is it’s okay to challenge the federal government and and push back a little bit. So I love that you made that point. Ricardo, I like asking everyone I have on the show about the future of chambers and I’d like to get your take on how you see the future of Chambers of Commerce and their purpose going forward.

Ricardo Mora (27:06.856)
I I believe that that chambers of commerce have been in our communities for so long. Sometimes new businesses have a hard time understanding our value proposition. So so chambers of commerce will always be here. I believe they will, but it really depends on each chamber and how integrated they are with their own community. In our case, what I could share is that.

We’re very, as you can tell, we’re very integrated cross-border. we understand businesses on both sides of the border. in my particular case, I’m a small business owner and I’ve been a small business owner all of my life. So I understand the pain that businesses go through. And and with that in mind, you know, believe in your in your value proposition and believe that you can also go to the community and have your community think about thriving.

Brandon Burton (27:39.83)
Yeah.

Ricardo Mora (28:06.432)
About how they can scale their businesses and how you can help them move forward. In our case, we’ve built programs since last year, where this is our second year running with AI programs for small businesses to help them really understand the tools that are out there to be able to scale and grow. We have businesses of all sizes. About 95% of our businesses are small, but we deliver, I call this like we deliver caviar.

So every chamber across the country delivers caviar. And when you deliver that on a dish, you also have to collect the caviar price. So my process is to say, listen, as long as you have a strong value proposition that you believe in, you go out there and you that you say this is what the value that we bring, this is why we charge X amount of dollars. So I would encourage every chamber member, every chamber across the country to look at their current offering.

Brandon Burton (28:34.292)
Okay.

Brandon Burton (28:49.751)
Yeah.

Ricardo Mora (29:03.414)
And have a strategic plan and think about how you can move forward. Because in order for chambers to thrive in this new economy, we really need to look at the at the at the revenue models. In our community, it’s doing great, but we’re different than than most. And and our members believe that they need to invest into the chamber that invests into El Paso. They’re really investing in in everything that we’re doing and how we’re driving forward.

Brandon Burton (29:15.553)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (29:31.243)
Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. Too many chambers undervalue what it is that they bring as far as influence, about as far as impact to the community. And if you can take a hard look and see what that caviar is that you’re delivering and charge accordingly. Make sure you’re getting the value out of that. And but y but you have to deliver the impact with it, right? You you can’t just charge, you gotta deliver the impact. So I love that that vision.

Ricardo Mora (29:53.432)
That is correct.

Brandon Burton (29:59.247)
Ricardo, before I let you go, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you or learn more about how you’re approaching things there in El Paso. What would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect?

Ricardo Mora (30:12.856)
Sure. So we are obviously located in El Paso, Texas. Our website is elpaso.org. Very simple. Elpaso.org. And if anybody wants to reach me, my name is Ricardo, ricardo@elpaso.org. And if you can’t remember my name, and maybe you’re old enough, you’ll remember Ricky Ricardo from I love Lucy. So it’s just Ricardo at elpaso.org.

Brandon Burton (30:38.635)
Ricky Ricardo, yeah.

Ricardo Mora (30:42.72)
Shoot me an email. Love to chat and share what’s working for us and what is not.

Brandon Burton (30:49.279)
That’s perfect. Well, I knew you were going there with Ricky Ricardo, so that’s that’s great. Well we’ll make sure we get your contact information in our show notes for this episode. But this has been great to have you on the show. And again, congratulations to you and your team, and I wish you guys the best of luck as Chamber of the Year.

Ricardo Mora (31:10.648)
Thank you very much, Brandon. Thank you for having us and we look forward to seeing you soon.

Brandon Burton (31:15.384)
Yeah.

If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts, Spotify or now on YouTube. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your feed each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.

Get started with your own Chamber Podcast and shortcut your learning curve with the Chamber Podcast Course offered by Chamber Chat Podcast.
Have you considered the many benefits of hosting a podcast for your Chamber? The options, leverage, and possibilities that a podcast offers are virtually endless. Download my FREE Guide-Podcasting for Chambers to learn how to start your own Chamber podcast!

2025 Chamber of the Year Finalist-Greater Memphis Chamber with Ted Townsend

Miles Burdine Chamber Chat Podcast promo image.

Below is an auto-generated transcription. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.

Feel free to join our Chamber Chat Champions Facebook Group to discuss this episode and to share your own experiences and tips with other Chamber Champions.

Join the Facebook Group

Brandon Burton 0:00
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.

Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your hosts Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

Our title sponsor for this episode is Bringing Local Back. Remember when your community could turn to a local TV station or newspaper for the latest updates and affordable ads? Those days may be fading, but the need for local connection remains. That’s why we created Bringing Local Back, a game changing platform that restores the local visibility and advertising power to your community. It’s more than just tech. It’s about driving engagement and creating new revenue for your chamber. Ready to see the future visit bringinglocalback.com to schedule your demo today. This is the future of local commerce.

Our guest for this episode is Ted Townsend. Ted is the President and CEO of the Greater Memphis Chamber, a position he’s held since 2022 he has a wealth of experience and leadership roles across private, public and non profit sectors. Prior to his current role, Ted served as the Chamber’s Chief Economic Development Officer, leading the chamber to its best year for economic development in 2021 he also served as the first ever Chief Economic Development and Government Relations Officer at the University of Memphis and as Deputy Commissioner and COO for the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development. Ted co founded and served as COO of our Genesis pharmaceuticals before his transition to the chamber. But Ted, I wanted to welcome you to Chamber Chat Podcast and give you a big congratulations to you and your team for being selected as a Chamber of the Year Finalist. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening, and if you would share something interesting about yourself so we can know you better.

Ted Townsend 2:17
Yeah, happy to and thank you for the invitation to be on the podcast. The Chamber community is one that’s close knit and very strong, and while there is an underlying competitive nature to the economic development aspect of chamber work, we are a community, and we all partner together and root each other on so I’m grateful to have an opportunity to provide some of what is going on in the greater Memphis area. I think for me, number one, I’m a recovering member of the the secret order of the cheering Elvi. And being in Memphis, you know, we’re home to Elvis Presley, and so I was a member of that group, and we would go to, like, the St Jude Children’s Research Hospital marathon and cheer on the runners. And yes, we were in our white polyester jumpsuits and our Elvis classes. I eventually had to retire from that because, you know, polyester is pretty hot and and so that’s something interesting, but I think it speaks to the spirit of Memphis and how we always cheer each other on. And the same spirit is brought to the chamber community, where I often have a chance to meet with peers and other members that are in chamber organizations. And we always love the collegial spirit that that is there. So, so that is something interesting. In terms of my background, I thought very carefully about that my team was telling me, you know, you may not want to talk about the cheering Elvi, but I think it’s fine.

Brandon Burton 3:53
Yeah, that’s great. I love getting those little tidbits. And yeah, and I will say that that’s, you know, a big reason why this podcast even exists is sharing that information and to really kind of be that incubator for that R and D research that’s happening, that ripping off and duplicating research. So, yeah, well, tell us a little bit about the Greater Memphis chamber to kind of give us a perspective of the size, the scope of work you guys are involved with. Obviously, there’s economic development staff budget, just to kind of set the stage for our discussion.

Ted Townsend 4:27
Yeah. So our chamber is a Regional Chamber, given the geography of Memphis, we are right in the southwest corner of the state of Tennessee, but I look across the Mississippi River, literally from this office, and I can see Arkansas, and we’re just north of the state line with Mississippi, so we serve our metropolitan statistical area, which is nine counties and three states. So we have to work regionally and and we help champion all of our chamber partners. Within that footprint our organization, we’re actually one of the oldest chambers in the United States of America, still operating. We’re 187 years old now, formed in 1838 and we were actually one of the charter members that formed the US Chamber of Commerce. So a lot of people don’t realize how old our organization is, and a constant that it has been in driving the business agenda forward for Memphis and now the region, we have a team of 55 professional Chamber members who are dedicated and spirited and driving our economy and workforce and community development. It really spans the breadth of, you know, the Chamber disciplines, both traditional and those that are innovative, from entrepreneurship and government advocacy, you name it, we do it. You know, we focus on really supporting the businesses that are here and creating those conditions that are necessary for growth. But we don’t lose sight on the fact that we serve the broader citizenry of this region. Yes, the businesses, but those businesses only exist when they employ the great people of our area. So we want to make sure that we have everyone equipped with the skills that are necessary to participate and a very great, growing and vibrant economy. Now, we have a budget of about 14 and a half million per year. We are 100% privately funded from the business community. We have multiple levels of membership, and our highest level is what we call the chairman circle, which was formed about 12 years ago now and and that now encompasses 225 of the top business businesses and business leaders in our community. So we’re proud of the fact that we’re 100% funded by the the private sector, because that gives us freedom to operate and and fidelity to make sure that we are ensuring that the business agenda is is a priority. So we interface, obviously, at the local, state, federal levels, with all of our partners and and, you know, we we entrust the responsibility of being a go to to this team, and they take that role very seriously. We have a lot of fun in the work that we do, but we also understand that that the importance of this organization, given how long it’s been around, is a driving force to really challenging any status quo and making sure that we are always oriented to a a forward leaning, uh, posture of progress and prosperity. Yeah, that

Brandon Burton 7:56
having that freedom, you know, being funded by by members. And, you know, private capital is very freeing, like you said, especially when it comes to advocacy and to not absolutely think too carefully responses or approaches. So that’s right, that’s great. Well, that definitely helps to set the stage for our discussion today, and great on these chamber of the year finalist episodes. I like to spend the majority of our time really diving into the details of the two programs that were submitted on your chamber of the year application. So as soon as we get back from a quick break, we’ll dive into those details and learn about those

Joe Duemig
Hi, I’m Joe and I’m Rose, and we’re the founders of App My Community, a mobile app that can be customized to meet the unique needs of your chamber of commerce.

Rose Duemig
When we started App My Community, we envisioned a tool that would help communities thrive by simplifying communication and enhancing engagement, Chambers of Commerce face unique challenges, and we’re here to help you tackle them.

Joe Duemig
App My Community helps the Evergreen Area Chamber of Commerce to create an app that keeps tourists informed, even when their office is closed, they provide 24/7 access to local business information, which helps support the local economy and community engagement.

Rose Duemig
In Rocky Mountain House, we helped Rocky Chamber create an app with dynamic itineraries and digital resources for tourists, increasing local business engagement. The app has become an essential tool for the community, promoting events and boosting visibility for local merchants.

Joe Duemig
Today, we empower more than 200 Chambers of Commerce campgrounds and RV resorts to streamline communication, informing members about events, sharing business updates and providing a digital hub for the community all in one convenient

Rose Duemig
app. When you partner with App My Community, our team works closely with you to create an app that meets your Chamber’s unique needs. As your community grows, our app evolves with you. We are here to ensure you engage effectively with your members and streamline your operations.

Joe Duemig
Schedule a demo today AppMyCommunity.com. We can’t wait to meet you.

App My Community creates mobile apps that allow you to engage directly with your community. Enhance chamber membership by providing a unique advertising and communication channel to residents and visitors. Not just a member directory, App My Community has the tools to be useful to residents on a daily basis. Learn more at appmycommunity.com/chamberchat.

Clint Nessmith
Are you ready to take your organization’s funding to the next level? Hi. I’m Clint Nessmith, CEO of Resource Development Group as a chamber of commerce or economic development organization leader, I know you understand the value of working with experts who understand your world, and that’s exactly what RDG does best. For over 30 years, RDG has specialized in fundraising for EDOs and chambers. We bring cutting edge strategies tailored to your organization, whether you’re just starting out or gearing up for yet another new funding cycle. Importantly, our firm executives are hands on from start to finish, from the feasibility study to the successful conclusion of your fundraising campaign, and our team brings deep industry roots and national expertise to every engagement, no matter the size of your community. RDG delivers data driven, innovative revenue solutions, reinforcing ROI to investors and making sure your vision becomes reality. At RDG, we proudly build organizations that build communities. Visit us today at RDGFundraising.com and let us partner with you building a stronger future for your organization and the community you are working to grow and develop?

Brandon Burton 12:40
All right, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’re going to cover the two program synopsis that were included in your chamber of the year application. Lindsay, it’s my understanding you had a significant, pretty significant role in the application and pulling everything together. So I’d like to hand the microphone over to you and have you highlight, I know there’s two different programs, one about an airport, one about move to Jackson. Do you want to highlight move to Jackson for us first, and what that program, what the origins were, kind of the background and and how things have evolved to what it is today.

Brandon Burton 11:23
all right, Ted, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’ll dive into the two programs that were submitted on your application. I don’t know if you have a preference on which program you want to address first, if it makes any difference on the order, but I’ll let you choose which one you’d like to highlight first? Yeah, so I think

Ted Townsend 11:43
we’ll go in order of what we put in the application. And it happens also be alphabetic too, so it’s kind of nice, but America’s river crossing was the first program that we submitted for consideration to earn chamber of the year. And why we focused on that, because it really did speak to several elements of Horizon, 2035 and our strategic plan of prosper Memphis. 2030 it represented the Chamber’s efforts, really, over the last two decades, to focus on Memphis as America’s distribution center. Obviously, we are seen as a global logistics leader, home to FedEx Corporation headquarters and the largest hub in their network globally. But we also have a high concentration of all of the modalities of transportation. We call them the four Rs, with our Mississippi River, of course, our rail, we have the third highest concentration of rail in the country, and with all five class one railroads with major operations here the third R is the roadways. We have the third busiest trucking corridor in the United States of America, with interstates, 5540 69 and the future 22 really connecting coast to coast and north to south, with Memphis, pretty much in the epicenter of that. And then the last R is our runway. Obviously, I mentioned FedEx and the global hub that they have there, but the connectivity of that really brings in proximity the global market to Memphis within either, you know, 7072 hours or 96% of the world’s market can get into Memphis in just a few days time. So we’re really proud of that legacy, and our infrastructure is a critical component of that. A few years ago, when the interstate 40 bridge had a crack in it, it really shut down all commerce, both in the both along the the roadway itself, but also river barge traffic had to cease for a while, and it was down about six weeks, so the redundancy of our river crossings became of Paramount priority. However, the Chamber has a transportation committee, and we have for 20 years been advocating for additional crossings of the Mississippi River and the replacement of bridges. So we supported the state of Tennessee’s effort to pass legislation called the transportation Modernization Act, which then yielded a an allocation of state funds, $3 billion and out of all of the the needs of infrastructure across the state of Tennessee, and we’ve got 95 counties that all have amazing infrastructure needs, but the state prioritized the the Americas river crossing, as we coined it, and we were honored to to play that role as a chamber and helping the state pass this legislation and. And the enabling funding that we go into major projects along those same lines, the federal government had a bridge replacement program as part of the the infrastructure package of legislation that was passed, which was bipartisan and and with that program we applied with in partnership with the state of Tennessee and the state of Arkansas for the replacement of our interstate 55 bridge. So we did national advocacy in Washington, DC, in partnership with the state. They requested us to do that the first application, we did not play a role in in writing any of the narrative, and it did not score very well. So the state turned back to us and our long history of advocating for this, and asked us to help bolster the the application. So we built narrative. We had our Greater Memphis economic research group that’s embedded inside the Greater Memphis chamber provide some additional data and analysis, and we resubmitted that application, and we were thrilled to be awarded the largest infrastructure grant in the state of Tennessee’s history, $400 million from the Department of Transportation via the Federal Highway Administration, and that is matched with 250 million from the state of Tennessee and 250 million from the state of Arkansas. So it’s a nearly billion dollar bridge replacement, which will really be a signature bridge across the Mississippi River and redefine our skyline downtown in Memphis, so it represents every element of public policy and convening and driving and prioritizing and yet also providing the data and The support and and really humanizing the narrative of why this is important and why Memphis should be granted this, this major award, and for it to be the largest in the state’s history, is not lost on us. This is a 70 year old bridge, not seismically retrofitted. It is a challenge to get across that thing. Now, given the fact that we are the third busiest trucking corridor, so this allows for greater safety, it allows for greater capacity, and it solidifies our position as America’s distribution center, moving forward into the decades ahead of us, I

Brandon Burton 17:34
can see the huge need for it. With you guys being central hub and all the yes incomings and outgoings. It makes total sense. So you said this is a this is part of the stretch of I 55 is that correct?

Ted Townsend 17:47
Yes, it is interstate 55 which connects Chicago with New Orleans, pretty much Memphis being equidistant to each Yeah.

Brandon Burton 17:54
So as I’m thinking about the bridge, when do you know when the original bridge was built. And I guess I’m asking the question, because I’m sure there’s technology advancements. You mentioned, the seismic retrofitting and stuff like that. But what, absolutely, you know technology? Yes, are there?

Ted Townsend 18:12
Yeah, well, it was over 70 years ago, so the lanes are much more narrow than what we typically would see in a new interstate or bridge build present day. So this new bridge will have added capacity, added lanes, and present a much safer environment for for for motorists and and trucks that are crossing. But also, you know, it adds to that, that volume and capacity, as well, the state just completed an interchange on the Tennessee side of the bridge. So coupled with that, it’s, it’s going to allow for much more traffic and logistics to flow through here. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 18:57
that’s, that’s amazing. I know, you know, Dunkin Donuts, as they’re saying, of America runs on Dunkin but you guys probably say America runs through Memphis, right?

Ted Townsend 19:08
We actually can say that. Yeah, we have the highest concentration of logistics companies in the country here in Memphis because of those modalities of transportation. And yes, it doesn’t hurt that FedEx, who employs 500,000 people around the globe, is headquartered here. They have over 30,000 employees here in Memphis, and they’ve been operating for the last five decades here as their base of operations and their headquarters. So yeah, we feel that is true, and that really became very evident during the pandemic when we saw the global supply chain challenges that were well documented. Memphis was actually a solution point for the movement and the continuance of movement of goods around the. Country and FedEx certainly played a pivotal role in the distribution of the vaccines. So we, you know, we like to imagine, you know, Memphis is placing, and, you know, being responsible for the world’s recovery from, you know, an unprecedented global pandemic.

Brandon Burton 20:17
Yeah, well, as far as it comes to chambers making a big impact in their communities and their region. This is, you know, one, obviously putting you on the national stage. So, yes, great, great work with that one. And great. What’s the timeline for when the bridge, when they start working on it, or complete? Yeah, we

Ted Townsend 20:35
we anticipate the beginning of construction in 2026 and the completion of the bridge in 2030 again, that’s a fluid timeline, you know, given materials and construction, but they’re going to be building it right beside the current bridge. And when that is completely finished, they will bring down the the original and and we’re off and running. But you know, it’s, it’s a cable suspension bridge. It’s going to be absolutely beautiful. There are renderings that I’ve seen, and assuming there are no changes in that, it’s going to be a stunning piece to our skyline. So we’re excited for that, and the fact that we get to see it in our lifetime, four years from now is really not that far for a major, billion dollar bridge to be built across a mighty Mississippi River. Yeah, it’s

Brandon Burton 21:28
great to get the background story too. So as any of us listening, you know, drive across the bridge, you know, in 2030 onward, we’ll answer the story of how that bridge came to be exactly the role your chamber had in that well, let’s, let’s shift gears to the second program that was submitted on your application. If you’d like to introduce that one to us.

Ted Townsend 21:49
Yeah, happy to do so, the digital delta. And you know, I love to talk about this program, because it is one of those things where a chamber can put together all of those strategic plans and hope for the outcomes, and you hope that you’re around to see those outcomes. But in our case, the digital delta is a component of prosper Memphis 2030 and we’re already seeing the manifest yield of these strategies that we’ve been working on for the last five years. So the digital Delta, I will say this much if I were to say Silicon Valley, pretty much in any audience. You know, geographically, where I’m talking about and what I’m talking about, and so coming out of the the 2008 recession, going into even 2018 2019 Memphis really took 10 years to recover from that and and we were looking at ways to catalyze exponential economic growth. So we were actually one of three cities selected by the Brookings Institution to go through their inclusive economic indicators lab, along with Indianapolis and Orlando. That took about 18 months, but what we came out of that was with basically a database and dashboard of economic indicators that measure the strength or the lack thereof, of the Memphis economy. We took that and we compared ourselves with nine other peer cities that were similar in population and and business diversity. And so you have a cohort of 10. And as you can imagine, Memphis didn’t fare very well. We were pretty much in the bottom quartile of those cities that we were measuring ourselves against. And there was one economic indicator where we were actually number one, and that was the percentage of Information Technology positions held by African Americans. Hey, mind you, Memphis has the largest African American population in the United States of America. That had been Detroit. We have overtaken Detroit and remain with the highest population. And that is a source of pride. We see diversity as as our superpower, and seeing that indicator was not necessarily a surprise to us as measured against our peer cities, but at the same time that we were coming into this analysis and measurement, the McKinsey report came out along with a Wall Street Journal article that told basically tech companies that if you want to diversify your workforces, you need to move to where that talent is, and predominantly that talent is located in the southeast section of the United States. But the job growth was really coastal, so we. Took that, that methodology, if you will, or that clarion call of action, and started marketing the fact that we have this high concentration of black tech talent to tech companies. I went to Microsoft and toured their headquarters and and they said, you know, Ted, this is amazing. We wish we had known this two years ago, before we committed to building in Atlanta, and I was able to show them that actually, you know, Atlanta is number two to Memphis. So that was a false victory. But nonetheless, we realized we had a lot of great momentum and justification for major tech operations to invest in our region. I met with Mr. Fred Smith, founder of FedEx, who just sadly, recently passed away, and I showed him these data. And you know, he he held up the page that showed the chart with Memphis leading in black tech talent over 53 other major markets in the US, I mean, every big city. And he said, You know, there’s not much that surprises me at this point in my career. He said that this is shocking, and I know that FedEx has played a role in this, because the world is still catching up to the fact that FedEx is a technology company that happens to move packages around the planet, and that was a moment that galvanized our approach. And in fact, he and his son, Richard Smith, who is is a an executive with FedEx, coined the phrase digital delta, so we trademarked it, and we began using that as a marketing platform with the basis of data to say you could move a location here, Google, Microsoft, you name it. Fast forward to last year, and we had the opportunity of marketing Memphis to x ai, the startup AI, company of Elon Musk, and we were able to win that project and and beat out 50 other markets that they had been considering because of the fact that we could move at the the speed they wanted. We had the power that they needed, and we had the people and and so that now represents the largest investment in the state of Tennessee’s history. So you can see, we love to live in the superlatives, largest Infrastructure Grant, largest private sector investment in the state’s history. And now Memphis suddenly is thrust into the lexicon of great global tech hubs, because we are home to the world’s largest and most powerful supercomputer, which is x ai that powers grok their interface. So so now we have shifted our focus to the supply chain of AI Artificial Intelligence, both upstream and downstream. What does it take to create AI, it creates tangible things. I mean, you have to have servers, you have to have graphics processing units or chips. You have to have cooling systems and and all of these, these things that that energy that go into the creation of artificial intelligence. So and given the fact that Memphis is such a great logistics hub, it makes sense to now have Memphis focus on becoming a high tech manufacturing hub where you have proximity of these AI products that go into the end users. So we not only announced x ai last year, they’ve they’ve doubled down. They invested $12 billion dollars, and their first phase, they have committed to expanding their footprint from 200,000 GPUs or Nvidia chips, to now a million Nvidia chips. So the supercomputer is just getting more powerful right here in Memphis. So when you think about the computational power that it will take to put humans on the surface of Mars that will be originated from Memphis, Tennessee, and it still gives me goosebumps, and it’s that validation of what is the digital Delta. When you launch something like that, you you know, obviously get a lot of questions, and it’s new, and it’s a moniker that many people weren’t familiar with. They would ask questions, well, does that mean electric vehicles or robotics or AI? And the answer is yes, all of it, tech is ubiquitous now with business. And yes, we’re home to Ford Motor Company’s largest electric vehicle assembly plant and and so yes, we have the, you know, FedEx is largest hub, which has a tremendous amount of automation and robotics. And yes, we’re home to the world’s largest supercomputer. So now you have this concentration of investment that that reflects what the digital delta is. And we’ve even got the governor. Of the state of Mississippi using digital Delta in a Politico

Ted Townsend 30:05
interview that he just had. And, and, and they, they’ve had major announcements that reflect how they are growing in the AI space and in Arkansas right across the river. And I point this way because I’m looking literally out my window at Arkansas across the river, they announced Google is coming in to West Memphis, Arkansas, and that’s a $10 billion investment in a large data center campus. So suddenly, there’s validation of the PROSPER Memphis 2030, vision that was embodied in the digital Delta marketing effort. And we’re going to continue to add to the constellation of these great tech companies like Nvidia and Dell and super micro, who have all committed to coming to Memphis and having significant operations. And that x ai investment garnered us deal of the year last year from business facilities magazine, and we were the only chamber to be recognized. Mostly it was state led organizations and the great projects that they were able to announce in the platinum, gold, silver level, we won the bronze, but it was a Greater Memphis chamber that was recognized. And coming from my background at the state, when we won the state of the year and economic development. A lot of the deals of the year that that culminated with that, I wanted to bring that to my hometown, and I’m incredibly proud of this team and the effort that they put forward to not only get America’s river crossing funded and and soon to be built, but then the digital Delta really taking taking hold and and becoming our our identity. It’s a transformational moment, and it’s not something that we hope will take hold decades from now. It’s it’s already been realized, and that’s incredibly rewarding. Brandon, yeah, that is

Brandon Burton 31:59
great. What a a great accomplishment with the win of x ai, but also the continued inflows. That’s right, you know, the thought hit me that there’s, there’s enough people out there that think AI is going to take all of our jobs. But curious with x ai about how many jobs are being created in the Memphis area with this

Ted Townsend 32:21
facility, that’s a great question, because that was what we got as well. Well, this is just another data center. No, actually, it’s not data centers store data, but this is a computational learning cluster. So they have about 300 full time employees right now. 82% of those are Memphians, and they pay at Palo Alto rates, so everyone in that facility is making six figures now, and they don’t require four year degrees necessarily. So we have seen that as a tremendous opportunity where we can specialize accelerated skills training, provide people with certifications and credentials that can go to work in the world’s largest supercomputer and earn these incredible wages that are family sustaining, and that’s what that’s what chambers do. That’s the essence of of why we were created, and the work that we do. And and it’s so incredibly rewarding to be able to see that Memphians are feeling the impact of this. And, yes, this is a an attractor for in migration of talent here. And given the fact that they’re going to be exponentially growing the supercomputer, you know, we anticipate even more jobs. I mean, this is, you know, they, they’ve suddenly become our second largest taxpayer in Memphis, only behind FedEx, who has been operating again for five decades, right? So that that is really what is driving our economy. And just last year, our GDP eclipsed 100 billion for the first time in our history. And that does not even include X AI’s investment. So when we have done the projections, right when we’ve done the projections, what we see is that we’re going to have the one of the highest growing economies in the nation’s history in a two year period, really placing us only second behind Austin Texas, and we know what, What a juggernaut Austin Texas is for for economic growth. So we’re so excited about what the future represents. And the digital Delta now becomes one of those calling cards for our region and and it’s it’s justified, and we have proven the efficacy of what Mr. Smith envisioned for the Memphis region and and it’s, it’s bittersweet, but it’s a tremendous legacy. And he has so many legacies. But you know, knowing that the Chamber did got to partner with him on the rollout of digital delta is an incredible honor. And. And one that we’re going to continue to honor him and his contributions to our economy.

Brandon Burton 35:04
Yeah, I love that. Tie in with with the Smiths. And isn’t it amazing? Yeah, it’s

Ted Townsend 35:09
providence. I think, you know, I love to think of it that way. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 35:14
I love it. Well, obviously, two huge, impactful programs that you guys are driving there, the greater Memphis chamber. As we begin to wrap up, I wanted to ask for those listening who want to take their chamber up to the next level. What kind of tip or action item would you suggest in their efforts to do that?

Ted Townsend 35:35
Yeah, for me, you know, I don’t want to over simplify this, because the work that we do is highly complex and it’s multifaceted, but I think the underlying current is you have to listen to the business community. You have to understand with multiple touch points and an intentional engagement, what is paramount to them? What does the business community expect and need? And in times of both distress and in times of major accomplishments, because each represent new challenges and opportunities for growth. And so I take pride in the fact that we are open and we are asking for engagement and opportunities to learn what the business community needs. I would say, get out there. You know, get get active and be present and be an active listener. And most importantly, you have to act on it, and you have to show that the feedback that they are giving you is not ending up in a loop of noise, but is being thoughtfully and appropriately enacted and and that’s what has really spelled success for us. When you think about just America’s river crossing, we would not have been in a position to help win that if we had not been listening and advocating for 20 years. Yeah, and you have all of this variability in political cycles and administrations change, and that’s at every level, local, state, federal, but the one constant is always a chamber, because they’re the go to. And in our case, we’ve been around for a long time, but I think that’s true for every chamber in the community that they represent. It is, you know, you are equipped to act because you’ve been listening to what they need and and that’s a special thing that it sounds very simple, but I, you know, I engage with as many of our members as I can, and an annual basis, I want to sit with them. I want to hear we have mid mornings with Ted and we have breakfasts with a lot of TED Talks.

Brandon Burton 38:14
I thought a plan on that with this episode. I had to do it. I had to

Ted Townsend 38:17
put it in there. I hope that doesn’t hurt our scoring. But But Ted also listens, and we have a team that listens. And so I would just recommend that have as many interfaces as you possibly can, can schedule and don’t get caught up in the pageantry of events, because those are wonderful. And we celebrate every ribbon cutting, because it represents a business stream realized here in our community. But we have to do even more, and we have to show up and continually offer that support.

Brandon Burton 38:52
Yeah, I love that response, and in fact, it kind of leads into the next question I was going to ask about, and you guys are very future looking, future leaning, I would say, so as you look to the future, how do you see chambers of commerce and their purpose going

Ted Townsend 39:08
forward? Yeah, well, you know, again, I go back to challenging that status quo. When I came in as Chief Economic Development Officer, you know, having the success at the state level. I wanted that here. So we wanted to implement similar structures and strategies to to garner that kind of success. And it’s creating that culture of winning and and creating that culture you wake up every day expecting to win, and that is not in a boastful way. That is just an orientation that that I expected myself and and that has, you know, it’s really, I think, inspired the team here to understand that we can dream as big as we dare, and if we don’t, who will for Memphis. So, so we. Want to always apply innovative approaches. We love to be first in space. We love to live in the superlatives, being the best, the most, the first. And it’s not for our recognition. It is not necessarily to win, you know, the trophies, or, in this case, chamber of the year. We want that badly, but it’s because it’s the work, it’s the body of work, and it’s the impact on our community that ultimately provides that outcome and result that we expect. We expect prosper Memphis, 2030 to to see the goals hit where we will be because of Brookings research, we will be in the top quartile of those cities that we measure ourselves against. And when that happens, prosperity is shared. And if we leave anyone behind in this moment, we have failed. We hate poverty, and Memphis has long suffered from having pockets of just devastating poverty in our communities, and I will not rest, and this team at the Greater Memphis chamber won’t rest until we normalize and equalize economic prosperity for our citizenry so that we don’t have census tracts that have suffered generationally, but now you know, South Memphis is home to x ai, and those neighborhoods are getting investment, direct investment from the tax revenues that are coming in. The mayor is passing an ordinance to directionally put 25% of the net new revenues into the 38109, zip code, which has been a zip code, has seen this investment and and so many barriers for so many generations, that to me, Brandon is what a chamber is to do and to be about. And we’re gonna we’re gonna find new goals, and we’re gonna crush those as well, because we don’t rest in complacency, because our community deserves so much more.

Brandon Burton 42:08
Yeah, that’s awesome. Well, Ted, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and and learn more about how you guys are doing things there in Memphis and do their own R and D. Where would you turn them? Absolutely the best way for them to reach out.

Ted Townsend 42:24
Well, first I will say this because I’ve been the beneficiary of many of my colleagues in in the chamber work who have offered their best practices freely. And we’re an open book. This is not a time nor place to be proprietary. So we want to share everything that we have been through to help others. So the best way, I mean, my email is ttownsend@memphischamber.com you know, I always invite my mobile numbers on my business card. So that’s how open I want to be with, with our our peers and partners and community. Our website is Memphis chamber.com and we have a marketing website called MemphisMoves.com of course, we’re on all of the the platforms with social media, but MemphisChamber.com MemphisMoves.com, and then certainly my email are the best ways for us to get connected. And if there’s any research or examples of the industry reports that we put out there, or the economic impact studies that our Economic Research Group has done, most of those are on our website. And if anyone needs any assistance in that, we’re more than happy to to partner with them.

Brandon Burton 43:45
Yeah, that’s fantastic. We will get your contact information the websites or show notes to make it easy for people to find you and reach out and connect. But Ted, this has been great having you on the show. Thank you. Guys are making huge impact. It’s been fun to learn about these programs and to put a bigger spotlight on Memphis. So I wish you and your team Best of luck as chamber of the year.

Ted Townsend 44:10
We’re crossing everything that we’ve got. Can’t wait for a few weeks from now, and it’s all announced.

Brandon Burton 44:17
If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.

Get started with your own Chamber Podcast and shortcut your learning curve with the Chamber Podcast Course offered by Chamber Chat Podcast.
Have you considered the many benefits of hosting a podcast for your Chamber? The options, leverage, and possibilities that a podcast offers are virtually endless. Download my FREE Chamber Podcasting Guide to learn how to start your own Chamber podcast!

2025 Chamber of the Year Finalist-Grand Rapids Chamber with Rick Baker

Miles Burdine Chamber Chat Podcast promo image.

Below is an auto-generated transcription. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.

Feel free to join our Chamber Chat Champions Facebook Group to discuss this episode and to share your own experiences and tips with other Chamber Champions.

Join the Facebook Group

Brandon Burton 0:00
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.

Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your hosts Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

Our title sponsor for this episode is Bringing Local Back. Remember when your community could turn to a local TV station or newspaper for the latest updates and affordable ads? Those days may be fading, but the need for local connection remains. That’s why we created Bringing Local Back, a game changing platform that restores the local visibility and advertising power to your community. It’s more than just tech. It’s about driving engagement and creating new revenue for your chamber. Ready to see the future visit bringinglocalback.com to schedule your demo today. This is the future of local commerce.

You’re joining us for a special episode in our 2025 ACCE Chamber of the Year Finalist Series, and our guest for this episode is Rick Baker, representing the Grand Rapids Chamber. Rick is a seasoned Chamber of Commerce professional with a career spanning over three decades, beginning in 1988 as the director of finance and membership at the Rochester Area Chamber in Minnesota. Rick went on to lead chambers in Newton, Iowa and in the Iowa, Illinois Quad Cities home to major corporations like Maytag and John Deere. Since April of 2011 Rick has served as president and CEO of the Grand Rapids chamber. His passion for supporting the business community was shaped by his upbringing in a family of business owners. Rick holds a degree from the upper Iowa University and earned his IOM certification from the University of Colorado, Boulder Rick, we’re excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. And first of all, I want to say congratulations to you and your team is being selected as a 2025 chamber of the year finalist. But I wanted to give you a chance to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening, and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Rick Baker 2:24
Oh, well, you know, thank you for having me, and I love that you said seasoned. I think that’s a nice way of seeing the old guy. It’s been a, you know, it’s been an awesome career. Otherwise I wouldn’t still be here, right? And we’re honored to be a finalist for the chamber of the year, and our colleagues from Topeka and Memphis run some amazing chambers of commerce as well. So just being a finalist and with them is quite an honor. So that’s something interesting about myself. You know? What people might not know about me is I’m also a licensed Merchant Marine Captain, and so I can drive some pretty big, pretty big yachts and boats on mostly on Lake Michigan.

Brandon Burton 3:13
Very cool. So little fun fact, I didn’t know this until just recently. You know, we’re in this world right now where tariffs are such a hot topic, and I’d seen in your bio that you were part of the Coast Guard, and I didn’t realize the Coast Guard was initially set up to collect tariffs from imports coming into the United States. So when you say Merchant Marine, that makes even more sense to me. Now I don’t know where I missed that in in my schooling, my education, but I found that interesting. Yeah, yeah. Well, tell us a little bit about the the Grand Rapids chamber, just to set the stage for our conversation today. You know, give us an idea of the size staff, scope of work, things you guys are involved with, budget, just kind of prepare us for our discussion. Yeah.

Rick Baker 4:02
So we are on a growth trajectory as a Chamber of Commerce. We’ve been very intentional about having our eyes set on a 10 year plan, and we’re 2028. Is that we will have reached that 10 year mark when we started our journey. We are currently, this current year, we’re about $6 million in annual revenue. We have 4445 staff people on our team. So we have a great group of people on our team that deliver some high quality programming and high quality interactions with our members. And one of our values is, you know, member experience

Brandon Burton 4:44
Absolutely. So as far as the organization goes, Are you guys strictly chamber? Do you have that it’s the tourism aspect or economic development, or what is the scope of work look

Rick Baker 4:56
like? Yeah, we are strictly chamber. We are. Master organizations, which, like in many cities, we were the chamber, actually started the economic development organization and the tourism bureau, but spun them out into separate organizations. The three of us work very well together. We have very specific lane of work that we do in our communities. I serve on both of those boards for both those organizations, but they are independent and separate organizations. So we are strictly Chamber of Commerce. We’re 137 years old this year, and very true to our original mission of being, you know, relentless advocates for our business community.

Brandon Burton 5:36
Awesome, very cool. Well, that that definitely helps us with the setting the stage, and as I do with these chamber of the year finalist episodes, I like to spend the majority of our discussion time on the two projects that you guys submitted on your chamber of the year application. I think there’s a lot to be learned from those projects, as you’re obviously making an impact in your community to be noticed on a national stage. So we’ll dive in much deeper on those two programs as soon as we get back from this quick break.

Joe Duemig
Hi, I’m Joe and I’m Rose, and we’re the founders of App My Community, a mobile app that can be customized to meet the unique needs of your chamber of commerce.

Rose Duemig
When we started App My Community, we envisioned a tool that would help communities thrive by simplifying communication and enhancing engagement, Chambers of Commerce face unique challenges, and we’re here to help you tackle them.

Joe Duemig
App My Community helps the Evergreen Area Chamber of Commerce to create an app that keeps tourists informed, even when their office is closed, they provide 24/7 access to local business information, which helps support the local economy and community engagement.

Rose Duemig
In Rocky Mountain House, we helped Rocky Chamber create an app with dynamic itineraries and digital resources for tourists, increasing local business engagement. The app has become an essential tool for the community, promoting events and boosting visibility for local merchants.

Joe Duemig
Today, we empower more than 200 Chambers of Commerce campgrounds and RV resorts to streamline communication, informing members about events, sharing business updates and providing a digital hub for the community all in one convenient

Rose Duemig
app. When you partner with App My Community, our team works closely with you to create an app that meets your Chamber’s unique needs. As your community grows, our app evolves with you. We are here to ensure you engage effectively with your members and streamline your operations.

Joe Duemig
Schedule a demo today AppMyCommunity.com. We can’t wait to meet you.

App My Community creates mobile apps that allow you to engage directly with your community. Enhance chamber membership by providing a unique advertising and communication channel to residents and visitors. Not just a member directory, App My Community has the tools to be useful to residents on a daily basis. Learn more at appmycommunity.com/chamberchat.

Clint Nessmith
Are you ready to take your organization’s funding to the next level? Hi. I’m Clint Nessmith, CEO of Resource Development Group as a chamber of commerce or economic development organization leader, I know you understand the value of working with experts who understand your world, and that’s exactly what RDG does best. For over 30 years, RDG has specialized in fundraising for EDOs and chambers. We bring cutting edge strategies tailored to your organization, whether you’re just starting out or gearing up for yet another new funding cycle. Importantly, our firm executives are hands on from start to finish, from the feasibility study to the successful conclusion of your fundraising campaign, and our team brings deep industry roots and national expertise to every engagement, no matter the size of your community. RDG delivers data driven, innovative revenue solutions, reinforcing ROI to investors and making sure your vision becomes reality. At RDG, we proudly build organizations that build communities. Visit us today at RDGFundraising.com and let us partner with you building a stronger future for your organization and the community you are working to grow and develop?

Jamie Beasley
Hey, Chamber Execs, are you juggling ribbon cuttings, grant deadlines, membership renewals and a rogue newsletter that just won’t format? That’s where Econ Dev Ops comes in. We’re a virtual assistant agency built exclusively for chambers and EDOs. From social media to CRM cleanup to event planning to inbox management, we handle the behind the scenes work so you can focus on impact. And here’s the best part, we don’t just assign a random virtual assistant, we match you with someone who fits your workflow, your communication style, even your level of type-A. Visit econdevops.com or email us at hello@econdevops.com and finally, cross “hire help” off your to-do list. Econ Dev Ops helping community champions make a bigger impact!

Econ Dev Ops is the virtual assistant service built specifically for small Chambers of Commerce and Economic Development Organizations (EDOs)

Brandon Burton 9:49
All right, Rick, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break today, we’re diving in on the two programs that you guys submitted on your chamber of the year application. I don’t know if. You have a preference on which one we cover first, but I’ll, I’ll let you decide with which which program you want to dive into.

Rick Baker 10:06
Sure. Let’s talk a little bit about the first one is our office space itself, which sounds maybe a little bit funny. We started a journey back in 2018 that kind of referenced in my earlier marks on a 10 year journey of reinventing ourselves as an organization, and part of that had to do with moving to a new office. Our previous office space was very traditional. It was like where the employees came to work. It wasn’t a great opportunity for our members to engage with us. And so as we thought about our reinvention and rebranding of us as an organization, it felt like a great opportunity for us to rethink how we work, and I asked our design team that we hired, can our office space actually be a benefit of chamber membership versus an overhead cost for our organization. And so what we designed and what we have now is very much of a collaborative work environment. We have a work cafe on the first floor. It’s a coffee shop on the first floor. Our members drop in and work, and they come in between meetings, and it’s pop in, you know, beer from one of our local breweries in the refrigerator for late afternoon if somebody feels like they would like to have a beer. And then on this second floor, we have an a series of meeting rooms, and we had such high utilization that, like, two years ago, then we did an expansion and 5000 square foot expansion, and added additional meeting rooms, and we’ve seen our utilization triple. A lot of businesses. We are literally now the center, the hub of business activity for our business community, which was our goal to have our the leadership teams of our major corporations and our small businesses, mid sized businesses, coming in and using our space for their strategic planning. Nothing fills my bucket more than seeing the leadership team of one of our companies, whether it’s our largest corporation or down to, you know, smaller company, their team in their white boarding like, where are they going? Where’s their future? Is it we’re better placed to do that than at your chamber of commerce?

Brandon Burton 12:28
That’s awesome. Yeah, I’ve not heard of this type of a model with the office space before. Is this something that you’d seen somewhere? Is it just, you know, one of those ideas that come to you when you’re in the shower? Or how did this come to be?

Rick Baker 12:44
I get my best ideas when I’m driving. I call it windshield time, you know, brainstorming. And I think sometimes my staff gets a little nervous when they know I’m going to be in the car for very long, because I always come back with great ideas, right, right? But, you know, I mean, co working space in is not something that’s unusual for a lot of communities, but for a chamber, I think you know, making your office be the the co working space for your community is maybe unusual or unique. And I think you know, teaming up with our architectural design team, and you know them knowing what our our vision was for our space, that it be something that our members could benefit from. You know, they really helped us through a process to identify what could that look like. Now, they also made, made us aware, very much aware. And I think this is probably very typical of a lot of chambers, as they studied us in our old space and watched how our employees worked. You know, everyone had their own office. Everyone had their cubicle that was assigned to them. And, you know, in the in the design language, they were like, this, real estate, you’re tying up real estate, but half of but you’re only there half the time, yeah. And so you’ve got all of this real estate tied up, and your employees are coming and going, and so that allowed us to rethink how we worked as well as we now, no one, including me, has an office that’s assigned to me. There are spaces that I can go and work and be in an office environment, but it’s not assigned to me. I don’t have pictures up, I don’t have things that you know that designate that this belongs to Rick. So it allows us to have more of our space focused on our members and less tied up in real estate that’s being used half the time.

Brandon Burton 14:40
So I’ve heard of chambers doing co working spaces, for sure, but not having their office space be that that canvas right for that co working space. So I think it’s a very unique idea with 45 staff. Was that a hard idea to get across the staff that you. Won’t have your designated real estate within the office as you as you termed it before,

Rick Baker 15:05
yeah, we went through a process. You know, early on, when we first moved in to our space here, with the team that was kind of converting, and our, one of our office supply or office manufacturing companies has a process to help you actually go through that. And for, you know, there’s protocols that you, you know, you create that are kind of basically the unspoken rules of how you operate. You know, when you sit at a spot and then, like, how do you leave it for the next person? So we did a lot of training with our employees. Like, this is what to expect. And no, the conversion was actually fairly easy. There’s, you know, there’s, it took a little while in the very beginning, and I actually think it positioned us very well when, when all of us had to deal with covid and work remotely, we were all used to working with our backpack and being remote anyway, basically. And so it really helped us adapt quickly when it came to covid.

Brandon Burton 16:09
So that that question was on my mind, you know, first of all, it sounds like this is a new space for you. It wasn’t an existing office space. Is that correct?

Rick Baker 16:19
Right? It’s new. We moved down, you know, a couple few blocks from where we were previously, out of our Okay.

Brandon Burton 16:27
So then my next question was, with the new office space, when did you guys make this move, and did you have to deal with covid During that time, and, and I’m sure that had some, you know, maybe complications, but also benefits, as you mentioned, with already being structured with that kind of office structure. But what did you guys see through that experience?

Rick Baker 16:47
Our original move in here was 2018 March of 2018 so we were in here for two, two full years before 2020 came around in Michigan. You know, everything was completely closed down during covid, and so we were not able to come into our space. We were not able to have members in our space at all during 2020, for almost a whole year, then when we had to actually designate because, like I said, we have our work, work campaign, which is a coffee shop. Then we have meeting room space. They’re all designated differently at the state of Michigan during that time. And so we were able to open pieces of it at different times. And so yeah, it was a quite a journey. What we found after covid was the utilization even higher when people started coming back to work, when we did open up, and that that drove our expansion in 2022 Yeah, and a number of companies, because some of those companies were actually shrinking their footprints a little bit, and so leaning on us more for meeting spaces and things like that.

Brandon Burton 18:00
Yeah. And I’m sure things had to be thought through as far as, like sanitizing a workspace before you leave. And, you know, the stuff we don’t want to think about anymore. So yeah, we won’t dwell on that part of it so much. But I like the idea of you guys being so well positioned, you know, ahead of covid to as these changes happen that, you know, other offices kind of scaled down, and people working from home, but maybe at home, they don’t really have a space to work from, so to be able to utilize their chamber membership to come to the chamber office and have space there to be able to work do you see a number of people that come consistently, like every day or multiple times a week, or what’s that? That info like

Rick Baker 18:44
we do, we do have some, what we call frequent flyers. We have folks that are here almost every day, if not every day. And we’ve seen, you know, kind of unintention, not necessarily the intent of our our thoughts originally, but have embraced it. We’ve seen kind of some incubation of some small businesses that that’s then as they finally got their own space, they moved out. We’ve seen that multiple times where, you know, companies that got started, and then they finally get to 345, employees, and they find their own they get their own office space, and move out, and they still come back and use our meeting rooms. But God, we have some companies that are here quite a bit, and we’re actually thinking next, what’s next for us? And we’ve done a we’ve met with our frequent flyers, especially to find out, like, what else could we do to make this even more valuable to you as a chamber member,

Brandon Burton 19:42
yeah. So I love hearing the stories of incubators getting started and spun off. And I know for a lot of these incubators, these brand new businesses, having that physical space and even an address is so important for them getting started. Are they? Able to utilize the address the building, or how is that factored into utilizing the space?

Rick Baker 20:06
So actually, right now, no, they do not use it as their mailing address. That is something we’re thinking about as an add on benefit to probably a cost to some of those that are more frequent flyers, but they can do pretty much everything other than, you know, have access to the space you know, during our office hours, and they don’t have it as their mailing address unless we work out a special when we that’s kind of our next phase,

Brandon Burton 20:37
yeah, so from a tactical standpoint, do people Reserve meeting rooms and spaces? You mentioned they’re classified in different areas. So is that something they go online and book a room? Or how does that work?

Rick Baker 20:53
Yeah, we have, we have a person on our team that manages all of the meeting room space, because we now have like, 15 meeting rooms. And you know, it’s so and most of them are full every day, all day, with different clients. And so it’s a lot of moving parts, a lot of people, lot of energy, lot of activity in this in our office, which I love. And so it takes, you know, we had to have a person on our team that could manage all of that, make sure that they got a good customer experience, and provide them, you know, with the room set up and there’s, like I said, there’s about 15 different meeting rooms, and they’re laid out differently, different sizes, depending on what the need is of our members,

Brandon Burton 21:37
yeah, very cool for a chamber listening who might be interested in doing something similar. Has is there big lessons you guys learned in setting up this kind of an office space that they might want to take note of before venturing into something like this?

Rick Baker 21:56
Um, you know, I think, I think a lot of it depends on the the team in place, and are they willing to give up their actual designated office. It takes, you know, some learning, and you know, willingness to do that. I guess you could have that. It would just cause you would just have to have much more square footage to be able to accommodate both, you have to be willing to have this level of activity in your office. To have there is a lot of activity, and there’s a certain level of now, our team loves it, you know. And most a lot of the people that have been hired in, they like this environment. They know what they’re coming into. So yeah, but there’s a certain level of stress when you have guests, you know, like, if you have guests in your home for a weekend, you know that there’s, like, a it’s you can’t just relax and sit around like you normally would. And so there’s a just a little extra level of activity.

Brandon Burton 23:03
Call it attention. Yeah, you’re more attention.

Rick Baker 23:07
Be willing to work with and have around you. I love the energy our team. Loves the energy the interactions that happen in our with between our members and our staff and between members that are in our space. We hear that all the time. It’s like, oh my god, it’s a great one of our members referred to us as the town square like this is where you go if you want to see people that you’re you’ve been trying

Brandon Burton 23:31
to connect with. That’s awesome. I love that. So you’d mentioned that this is a benefit of membership. Is it a membership tier? Are all members welcome to? How does that structure work?

Rick Baker 23:44
So all members are welcome into our space. And then it’s a different membership levels of access to meeting rooms. And then maybe, you know, at the highest level, not have to pay for the meeting rooms in addition to your membership. So you get x number of utilizations a year based on your membership investment

Brandon Burton 24:03
levels. Yeah, very cool. Well, let’s shift gears to the the other program that you guys submitted on your application, if you’d like to to introduce with that program, is

Rick Baker 24:13
about, yeah. So like many chambers, you know, we are, we’re always working to create a community that’s vibrant and attractive and will attract people and attract business and and we’ve been on a journey here in Grand Rapids for number of years, and we’re so we’re at our next phase. And so it’s what we presented, was a couple of transformational projects. Is how we refer to them, as they’re transformational for our community. In those two projects are 14,000 seat empathy outdoor amphitheater, a entertainment venue, and that is in our downtown, and then a professional soccer stadium, which is also in our downtown. Area again, trying to continue our journey of creating high energy, high traffic, kind of attractions that then support our entertainment businesses, the so you know, hospitality businesses that we have in our downtown area as well as, you know, find, you know, adding additional tools in our toolbox, like, if you might say, for attracting great talent to our region.

Brandon Burton 25:29
Yeah, definitely that that place making aspect of making Grand Rapids a great place to live and entertain and and all of that. So you’d mentioned you guys are working through like this 10 year vision. Was there a capital campaign associated with that to execute on these projects? Or, I imagine the soccer stadium has something to do with the soccer team. Would would help finance with that. But how’s it coming

Rick Baker 25:57
together? Yeah, so our, you know, big piece of what we had to do was part of the capital stack to make these projects a reality. Was what we’ve used previously for some of our other projects as a portion of our hotel motel tax. And we needed to do through multiple steps, and part of that was getting legislation passed at the state level that would allow us to increase the hotel, motel tax that we use. We had to get approval first at this local, city and county boards so that we could go and ask for our legislature to change our ability to increase our tax and once we got through each one of those steps, we had to run a ballot campaign with our local voters to get approval for the increase. And of course, there’s a lot of messaging and a lot of things that you need to do to make sure that they understand it’s like, this is a hotel, motel, tax. It’s an attacks on your property. It’s not, you know, there’s

Brandon Burton 27:06
people your tax and they freak out a little bit. Yeah, people

Rick Baker 27:09
see tax increase and they, you know, there’s a certain reaction that you get immediately. And so there was a lot of work that our team had to do with partners in the community to make sure that the message was very clear, and people understood what the what they were supporting, and what they were helping to invest in for the future of our community. And so we were pleased that we were able to get a yes at each one of those steps along the way. There was a lot of pressure and timing that that was important because you, you know, you design like significantly, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of investment and costs change quickly, you know, a few years delay and the changes, the costs can change. And so we wanted to keep things moving, and so that the estimates for costs were accurate and we didn’t have any surprises later.

Brandon Burton 28:06
Yeah, when this is part of a 10 year plan and vision like, man, a lot of the costs have changed within that 10 year span. But it’s got to be very satisfying to see this, you know, coming from a dream or vision, a plan, to to something that’s materializing. What’s the timeline look like for completion on the amphitheater in the stadium?

Rick Baker 28:27
Yeah, so the amphitheater is well under construction. It started sooner. That was the first project that we got going on from a construction standpoint, and the first concert will be in May of 2026 Okay, and so, you know, there,

Brandon Burton 28:48
do you know who’s coming with? Not yet, okay, yeah, we might be able to pre sell some tickets here.

Rick Baker 28:56
I would think that it would be quite an honor for any entertainer to be the first entertainer in a new venue. And we have a, you know, our we have a great contract partnership with the organization that runs our arena and our convention center, and they’re now contracted to run the amphitheater and using Live Nation to, you know, work all the deals with the different entertainment groups. So, yeah, I’m sure that’ll be exciting, and it’ll be a hot ticket for sure.

Brandon Burton 29:29
Absolutely sounds very exciting. Yeah,

Rick Baker 29:33
soccer stadium is a little bit they’re just starting construction now. They’re doing groundwork and site work. They just started it recently, and so that’ll be about a two year build out before that’s completed some of the other steps that are coming along with that project. And we haven’t announced the the name of the team yet, you know, or team ownership, any of that kind of stuff. And so we’ve, I think, you know, we’ve been phasing it out, just. Kind of keep the attention and excitement, but we’ll be doing that very soon, because it’s important, because there’s material that needs to be bought and you want it to align with the colors of the team and right like that. And so that stuff will be coming along in the near future.

Brandon Burton 30:16
Yeah, that’s really cool. Well, Rick, as we begin to wrap things up here. I wanted to ask on behalf of you know, chambers listening, who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you suggest for them as they try to work towards that goal

Rick Baker 30:35
while we I think for us, what really has helped us as an organization, and that be at the beginning of this whole journey of re reinventing ourselves, as I mentioned back in 2018 and we also started implementing Eos, the Entrepreneurial Operating System. And there’s other operating systems out there Eos, what I like about it is, it is not hard, you know, it’s very simple. It gives you a set of tools. But what the most important thing it does is it gets the whole team laser focused on the on the goal. You know, everyone is aligned. And, you know, here’s who we are as an organization. Our values are alive. They’re not just something on a piece of paper. They’re on our wall, but they’re not just on the wall. We live them. I hear people on our team stay them, you know, they’ll reference them, you know, regularly. So I know that they’re on the top of mind for them. We use it for hiring and hiring, promotion, recognition, to have everything to make sure that our value is alive and well. But the long game, they understand where we’re going and then, but more importantly, they understand why, and that’s important part of it. You know, we can set a goal for something, but if people don’t understand, aren’t bought into the why that’s our goal, or why are we going this direction, or why do we need our, you know, our revenue, to be this amount, then it’s harder for them to maybe buy into the mission. And I think what we’ve seen as organizations, and I’m sure the other chambers that are listening, we’re able to, we’re able to attract really high quality talent, because especially it seems like the workforce right now wants to be part of a mission that they’re excited about, and so we have an advantage a little bit. We may not always be able to compete in the marketplace for wages against some of our largest employers, but we’ve been able to attract people because they buy into the mission in the in the focus of the organization. And we have a we’re able to do this work because we have an incredible team of people. I just get out of their way, you know? They we get the right people and let them do their work and bring their expertise to the table, and it works out really well for our members and our organization and our community. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 33:10
it’s super important to be clear on that that mission and purpose, and that’s going to drive people in the right direction, for sure. Oh, Rick, I like asking everyone I have on the show about the future. How do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Rick Baker 33:29
Yeah, that’s, yeah, that’s the age old question, right? You know? And I think the ACC has done incredible work with the Horizon Report and updating that again now it’s incredible how accurate the last one was to project out where we are now 10 years later, and so that’s been a great resource. I think our business communities and in our every city around the country need us now more than ever. We should be a business imperative, and that’s our goal here in Grand Rapids, we need to be a business imperative for every business in town with a pace of change the challenges that are coming, the how quickly those challenges are coming, the disruption that we have. Our members need us tremendously to help stabilize the environment that they’re in, and a lot of the growth, the the excitement that happens in this country that we all love is happening at the local level. We’re driving it this. It’s not being top down, driven from, you know, from Washington, DC, it’s bottom up driven now, top can affect it and make our jobs harder, but we can, we can push through it, and we will help navigate. We’re a resilient, you know, people here in the United States, in our cities, and so that’s to me, I think. You know, now more than ever and into the future, we are, if we’re doing the right kind of work for our members, we’ll be a business imperative for them. Yeah. I

Brandon Burton 35:10
love that. I love how you said it’s your job to help stabilize the environment that these businesses are trying to conduct their business in. And that’s

Rick Baker 35:18
thrives. Business thrives unstable and predictable. The unstable, unpredictable is where it’s like, oh my gosh, what are we doing? And so we can bring some stability to them and help them see what’s coming and be prepared for it. Then we become very valuable to them.

Brandon Burton 35:36
Yeah, absolutely. Well, Rick, I wanted to give you a chance to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you and either learn more about the programs you talked about, or more about how you guys are conducting business there at the Grand Rapids chamber in general. What would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect with you?

Rick Baker 35:56
Yeah, the best way to reach me is I is email, quite honestly, and it’s, it’s simple emails, is rick@grandrapids.org, okay, very simple than that.

Brandon Burton 36:07
Yeah, I like that. We’ll, we’ll get it in our show notes too, to make it easy, even easier for people, yeah, to reach out to you. But Rick, this has been great having you on the show. I appreciate you taking the time to visit with us and to share. You know these, these programs you guys are involved with that are making an impact in your community, and I wish you and your team Best of luck as chamber of the year.

Rick Baker 36:28
Thank you so much. Brandon, appreciate you.

Brandon Burton 36:33
If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.

Get started with your own Chamber Podcast and shortcut your learning curve with the Chamber Podcast Course offered by Chamber Chat Podcast.
Have you considered the many benefits of hosting a podcast for your Chamber? The options, leverage, and possibilities that a podcast offers are virtually endless. Download my FREE Chamber Podcasting Guide to learn how to start your own Chamber podcast!

2025 Chamber of the Year Finalist-Ocala Metro CEP with Tamara Fleischhaker

Miles Burdine Chamber Chat Podcast promo image.

Below is an auto-generated transcription. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.

Feel free to join our Chamber Chat Champions Facebook Group to discuss this episode and to share your own experiences and tips with other Chamber Champions.

Join the Facebook Group

Brandon Burton 0:00
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.

Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your hosts Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

Our title sponsor for this episode is Bringing Local Back. Remember when your community could turn to a local TV station or newspaper for the latest updates and affordable ads? Those days may be fading, but the need for local connection remains. That’s why we created Bringing Local Back, a game changing platform that restores the local visibility and advertising power to your community. It’s more than just tech. It’s about driving engagement and creating new revenue for your chamber. Ready to see the future visit bringinglocalback.com to schedule your demo today. This is the future of local commerce.

You’re joining us for a special episode in our 2025 ACCE chamber of the year finalists series. And for today’s episode, we’re thrilled to welcome Tamara Fleischhaker . Tamara is a powerhouse in public policy, community development and business advocacy. She currently serves as the interim president and CEO, as well as the chief experience officer of the Ocala Metro Chamber and Economic Partnership, or the CEP. With nearly two decades of leadership at the CEP, Tamara has played a pivotal role in merging organizations, launching innovative programs like business incubators and award winning communication strategies, and steering grass root political victories that have shaped the region’s future. Tamara’s roots in business run deep, from helping out in her family’s screen printing company in high school to work in in corporate marketing at Fortune 100 company to becoming one of Florida’s most respected chamber professionals. She is a certified chamber executive, a Florida certified chamber professional, and an IOM program graduate, recognized as a 2016 professional of the Year by the Florida Association of chamber professionals. Tamara recently chaired that same board in 2022 to 2023 outside of work, Tamara is a passionate community advocate, serving on multiple nonprofit boards. She’s also a die hard hockey fan who splits her loyalty between the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Toronto Maple leaves, and she loves exploring every corner of Florida but Tamara, I’m excited to have you on the podcast today. First, congratulations to you and your team for being selected as chamber of the year finalists. It’s quite an accomplishment, but thank you. Yeah. I wanted to give you a chance to say hello to all the listeners out there, but also to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Tamara Fleischhaker 3:04
All right. Well, wonderful. So thank you so much for this opportunity. We have such a tremendous team here, so I’m really grateful that that all of their work to get us to this finalist position. It’s truly an honor you. So you’ve already talked about my hockey background. You know, I love water, whether it’s the ocean or frozen ponds, if you will. And I probably, another interesting fact is I also love hot air ballooning. I had the opportunity to get involved in that when I was a teenager, and because I’ve been in a festival life, kind of a festival volunteer, for most of my life, and had the opportunity to crew for hot air balloons. And also, you know, go up in a few and that has always been a lot of fun. It’s something I don’t get much time to do now, in in the current role that I have, but it’s, it’s still a passion for me

Brandon Burton 3:51
that is really cool. I’ve never been up in a hot air balloon. I don’t know if I could, I don’t know if I could do it. I don’t know. I’ve seen videos of people that go up and they do skydiving from them, where they get no thank you. I don’t need to. I can’t do that for sure. I’m out myself. Yeah, very cool. Well, tell us a little bit about the CEP to kind of set the stage for our conversation. Let us know the size, the organization, staff, scope of work you guys are involved with budget just to kind of prepare us for the topics we cover.

Tamara Fleischhaker 4:23
Sure. So we our organization was formed about 13 years ago through a merger of both the Chamber of Commerce and the Economic Development Corporation in the Ocala Metro, and I’ve been with the organization through that merger. So it’s really been an exciting 12 years for us. When it was first formed, we were all coming out of a pretty tough, historic downturn of the economy, and we certainly had our issues in our community. So the organization was really formed with the goal in mind to be exactly what this community needed. I know people have. Merged and unmerged organizations, yeah, over time. And, you know, they always say, Well, what did you do? And I said, You know what the key to this is find out what your community needs. And that is what we did. And we’ve certainly seen the success with doing that. You know, Florida has seen tremendous growth. We ourselves were listed this year as the fastest, fastest growing Metro in the country, with a 4% growth rate year over year, which was a little bit of a okay, that explains why it feels like this in our community. And then, which is, of course, why we’ve also been focused on infrastructure. We’ll get to that in a little bit. But so this organization has, has really focused on, how do we grow jobs from the ground up? So entrepreneurship, we run two incubator facilities within our team. We also, of course, work on Business Retention and Expansion and business attraction in the traditional lanes of economic development. But outside of that, we are a full service, chamber functioning organization as well. And so we have on, you know, all of our full team that you would expect as a part of that we do all of the networking events and educational events, run a adult and a youth leadership program through the organization. So we have all of what you would traditionally expect within both sides of organizations. We just get to do it all with a really integrated team. We have about 30 staff members that host all of that because, additionally we we have a foundation within our structure. We have a a CDFI that we are working on within that organization. We also run a market space, which during covid, is something that really became a piece for us, that we have a facility, that it’s undercover, but yet outdoors, and we run a Saturday market out of there, and we rent it out to the community for different events, and, you know, festival pieces that they might do as well. So gives us another stream of income there, but it also adds a little bit more staff to the team. So again, we that’s our size of staff, we have about 1300 partners. We call our members partners because they are partners in the work that we do to support the business community. So that is how we look at our organization. So right around 1300 partners, I’m not sure if there’s something I missed in there, but I’m sure that if there’s another key point, you’ll let me know.

Brandon Burton 7:20
Yeah, no, I think you did a great job covering kind of that scope that you guys are involved with. I guess one of the aspects, budget wise, what do you guys look at? Budget wise? Yeah,

Tamara Fleischhaker 7:32
so for budget, we run about 4.4 million across our six entities,

Brandon Burton 7:37
okay, and I think that’s important, just for those listening to be able to try to scale, you know, the different programs and Exactly,

Tamara Fleischhaker 7:43
yeah, because they’re also wondering, how do you have 30 staff members? That’s

Brandon Burton 7:47
part of it, right? Absolutely so. And from what I remember before and having Kevin Sheilley on the podcast a couple of times, you guys are heavy in the equine industry as well. We

Tamara Fleischhaker 7:59
are. So yeah, we are blessed to be the horse capital of the world, and that is, I know a lot of people ask the question, Well, what about some other particular areas across the country? And we absolutely agree that Lexington is the thoroughbred capital. Ours is because we represent 73 different breeds, and we have one horse to every four people in our community. So we have more horses than any other place in the country, and that is part of the USDA registration of information. So yep, our our groups here have trademarked that name, and we love that. I I still believe we are the only chamber I know. We’re the only chamber in the country right now that has an equine initiative, which we absolutely love, because that is a huge part of our tourism trade here, and we absolutely enjoy having that be a part of our organization. And yes, so that is under what we call our traditional chamber side operations. But there is also economic opportunity in that as well, because we have a lot of companies that have created equine products in the community to meet the needs of what that horse community looks like.

Brandon Burton 9:04
Yeah, I think that’s a great example of going back to what you had said about creating the organization to what your community needs, right? You guys leaned heavy into that. So that’s awesome, absolutely. Well, on these chamber of the year finalist episodes, I like to spend most of our time really diving into the two program synopsis that were submitted on your chamber of the year application. So we’ll take a quick break, and when we come back, we’ll dive in deep on both of those and learn more about what you guys submitted.

Joe Duemig
Hi, I’m Joe and I’m Rose, and we’re the founders of App My Community, a mobile app that can be customized to meet the unique needs of your chamber of commerce.

Rose Duemig
When we started App My Community, we envisioned a tool that would help communities thrive by simplifying communication and enhancing engagement, Chambers of Commerce face unique challenges, and we’re here to help you tackle them.

Joe Duemig
App My Community helps the Evergreen Area Chamber of Commerce to create an app that keeps tourists informed, even when their office is closed, they provide 24/7 access to local business information, which helps support the local economy and community engagement.

Rose Duemig
In Rocky Mountain House, we helped Rocky Chamber create an app with dynamic itineraries and digital resources for tourists, increasing local business engagement. The app has become an essential tool for the community, promoting events and boosting visibility for local merchants.

Joe Duemig
Today, we empower more than 200 Chambers of Commerce campgrounds and RV resorts to streamline communication, informing members about events, sharing business updates and providing a digital hub for the community all in one convenient

Rose Duemig
app. When you partner with App My Community, our team works closely with you to create an app that meets your Chamber’s unique needs. As your community grows, our app evolves with you. We are here to ensure you engage effectively with your members and streamline your operations.

Joe Duemig
Schedule a demo today AppMyCommunity.com. We can’t wait to meet you.

App My Community creates mobile apps that allow you to engage directly with your community. Enhance chamber membership by providing a unique advertising and communication channel to residents and visitors. Not just a member directory, App My Community has the tools to be useful to residents on a daily basis. Learn more at appmycommunity.com/chamberchat.

Clint Nessmith
Are you ready to take your organization’s funding to the next level? Hi. I’m Clint Nessmith, CEO of Resource Development Group as a chamber of commerce or economic development organization leader, I know you understand the value of working with experts who understand your world, and that’s exactly what RDG does best. For over 30 years, RDG has specialized in fundraising for EDOs and chambers. We bring cutting edge strategies tailored to your organization, whether you’re just starting out or gearing up for yet another new funding cycle. Importantly, our firm executives are hands on from start to finish, from the feasibility study to the successful conclusion of your fundraising campaign, and our team brings deep industry roots and national expertise to every engagement, no matter the size of your community. RDG delivers data driven, innovative revenue solutions, reinforcing ROI to investors and making sure your vision becomes reality. At RDG, we proudly build organizations that build communities. Visit us today at RDGFundraising.com and let us partner with you building a stronger future for your organization and the community you are working to grow and develop?

Brandon Burton 12:17
All right. Tamara, we are back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’ll dive into the two program synopsis that were submitted on your chamber of the year application. I know one of them has to do with the sales sales tax referendum, sales tax referendum. If I could speak right, why don’t you tell us what that’s about, the history of that and how it came to be. You know, at the front of mind right now for you guys to approach,

Tamara Fleischhaker 12:42
sure, absolutely so for us, this was actually our third referendum that we ran on a sales surtax for infrastructure and first responders. We started back in 2015 again, recognizing that our community was growing so rapidly that even if we looked at impact fees and our traditional methodologies of you know you’re getting your property tax, we wanted to maintain a balance in all of that, because as a growing community, to meet the needs. So we recognize that the best thing we could do is run a sales tax because then it’s not just our community that pays for it, it’s all those visitors that come to us. So we started that first process. Ran it for four years, and it was successful. We won. Then what we found out is that there continued to be some pressure from the legislature about how taxes were run. They were setting some standards about when in the year cycle you could do it and for how many years you might be able to so we did another four year and was very successful. That led us to looking at this tremendous growth that we’ve already spoken of, how fast we were growing. We want to be able to keep up with that infrastructure and make sure that the services that our community enjoys are still able to be found in the community as you’re moving here, or for someone who’s been here their whole life, the other piece of that is our schools are struggling, because often what they find is they get some unfunded mandates that come along to them, and you have that tremendous growth, they’ve got more students, and they’re outpacing the facilities that we’ve had. So we also realized that we had kind of a dual need for what was going to happen in the next 10 to 15 years. So we thought, you know, when you buy a house, you don’t plan for just four years of how much you’re going to pay for a mortgage, you’re planning 20 years, right? 20 years or more. So we said, let’s think about this in terms of how roads are being built in the community, how the transportation plans are being written. And we decided to tackle it for a 20 year penny sales tax for transportation infrastructure. And then we decided to add a half penny for 10 years dedicated to school facilities. So that might mean existing, upgrading existing facilities and or building new schools, which is all happening as a part of that plan. One of the things. That has made this so successful for us is when we first went to the community with it, we were very transparent with it. The city and county joined in on this process, and every dollar that they’re spent, they’ve created a budget for it in advance. It goes through the city’s budget process every year. It goes through the counties, and every time they spend money, they show the money. So the county has a dedicated website, and each of them has it in their budget, what they’re spending from those committed pennies that they’re getting and how they’re using it, whether it’s 10 fire trucks and, you know, new radios for something, or whether it is improvements to our jail facility and we built, you know, 17 miles of roadway or resurface, 12 miles. It literally gets put down to every penny that they spend and how they’re doing that. And then each year in the budget cycle, they can, you know, re look at events that are going on in the community, or they can look at what their use is, or a special needs. Do we, you know, are we building out a new section of our community? Maybe need a new fire station. So you know, that can be adjusted each year as a part of the budget process, but that’s how we went about, kind of taking the lead in this and recognizing that we needed to bring a community together. The greatest part of this is how we were able to mobilize so many different groups together on this. We brought together our realtor Association, road builders. We brought together all of our Of course, you know, we’ve got our public and private on both sides of that, but the business community really came together for this, and we raised over $250,000 to help run commercials and take kind of a new digital turn on that. But we also had some of these organizations going ahead and sending email blasts or doing social media campaigns. We even went to to the unions for the school board and also to our first responders, and they shared out this information because it helps them. They’re getting new equipment. They’re getting well taken care of. It doesn’t come out of general funds. So they still get to, you know, maintain the salaries, and we still get they still get to have improvements there. Because the worst thing a community can do it would be to go ahead and train people and then not be able to pay those first responders and have them go to someone else’s community. So we put all of these pieces together. We were so excited that the community really came together behind this. It really was one of those things where, you know, you get that broad collaboration as a part of what we’re doing, and with that, we’re actually ending up building two elementary schools, adding a new wing to a middle school, and building a new high school. All in those projects are already in process for the next five years, and so there are some other improvements that will happen out of that for the schools, but it really is a big piece of how do we make sure that local governments have the flexibility that they need, that they can stay sustainable and that they have long term funding sources for the growing needs of our community, where they don’t have to put that tax burden just on the property tax zone, you know, for those who would pay property tax for owners. So that was a really big piece for us. Really exciting. It was the first time we’d ever done true digital media, basically being on, you know, Amazon Prime, being on Hulu. It was a whole new venture for us to take that large of a piece. But we, you know, we also did a lot of conversations to business groups, anyone that wanted us to talk about it. We come see them. We went out to several communities, you know, we’ve got larger housing communities in the in the in our metro, and went out talk to them, gave them the whole, you know, here’s what it is. We’re just laid out the facts. And it was really incredible to see how they all really supported that and came behind it. We passed it in every single district, every voting district, which I think is, you know, the bigger piece of this, that kind of, you know, a lot of people told us it’s going to be close. You’re going to be you might get one passed, you probably won’t get both, and it’ll probably be a pretty close vote. Well, I’ll take 63% of the vote for the sales tax renewal and 59% for the schools tax so when I look at those numbers, I think that that’s that’s a pretty good thing, saying our community agreed that we need to take care of our schools, and that we need to have our students in safe classrooms and having all the technology that they need for the future, and also that we’re taking care of our first responders and that we have great roads to travel on in the Ocala Metro. So, you know, we’re pretty excited about how that all came together this last year.

Brandon Burton 19:38
Yeah, think that’s a huge help with the for example, the the transportation and first responders, sales tax, when every penny is being accounted for, and you can go back and say, Look, this is where it’s all being spent, that makes it a whole lot easier to pass the next time it absolutely does. My question, when it when it comes to the schools, is there certain things that that money is allowed to be allocated? To or is there like, for example, sometimes when a bond is passed, maybe it can’t pay teacher salaries, but it can build new infrastructure, new schools, campuses and stuff like that. Yeah. So, yeah,

Tamara Fleischhaker 20:12
yes, yeah. So the parameters for this, actually, it is all about capital outlay. So this was very specifically for new construction, for facility updates, so there is none of this being spent on salaries. But again, it helps to keep that out of the general fund. And because of the term, they were able to put Bonds out so they could build the schools now and pay those off as they collect that sales tax over the next, you know, few years. So yeah, it is very specifically because they had funding, and we’ve helped them find it for other programming. We actually passed a one mill renewal two years ago that helps them with our technical training skills and being able to have more in the arts sector of their schools. So we’ve been helping out in that lane and bringing people together for that for you know, this is more than this one election cycle, but yes, this particular sales tax is dedicated very specifically to the capital investments within the schools.

Brandon Burton 21:12
So my other question with this program is, with the capital that was raised to promote and do the digital marketing and everything that you guys did it? Did you have somebody in house that could kind of leverage that, or did you contract and go with an agency that could help put you in contact with prime and Hulu and, you know those examples you mentioned?

Tamara Fleischhaker 21:29
Yeah, this, this was the first time. So in the first couple of campaigns we we did a lot in house, social media, driven in those but this was well outside of our wheelhouse. So we absolutely did hire an agency. And I will tell you, it was an agency that was referred to us by a partner in the community. And again, you know, we had so much of our business community that said, you know, we’re absolutely behind you on this, and helped fund that investment. So yeah, we did a little bit of we supplied some B roll and some other video because we do have our own video studio in house, so we were able to work with them on that and help put together the scripting. And so that was kind of the fun part, that we were able to use some of what we’ve done in the community and our own video studio and supply that information to them. But yeah, we definitely hired this out, just to make sure you want to put the experts in a smart move. Yeah, yeah. And I think every year, we all realize as Chamber organizations, it gets harder and harder when you’re doing political things on social media and and those types of channels. There’s so many restrictions that are put in place that it’s always best to let the experts do that if you’re in a position to do it.

Brandon Burton 22:37
Yeah, absolutely. Well, let’s shift gears and change our focus on to the other program that you guys submitted on your application. If you’d like to introduce that program and tell us what it was all about.

Tamara Fleischhaker 22:49
Absolutely. So our other program is what we call the Ocala Metro Catalyst Fund. This is a community development finance institution which is regulated through the US Treasury Department, this was a new thing for us. We I guess I should step back and say, you know, we started an incubator program with the help of the county and city on the campus that we have here, because we are right across from City Hall, and within our campus area here, they had a building that used to be the original power plant for the city of Ocala, and so both of those entities helped us open up in that building. So it’s the power plant business incubator. So we started there with a real focus on entrepreneurship. And how do we help people to grow their own business? Right? It’s the greatest way that you can have control of your own career and your life is to be able to start your own business. And so we have been running that incubator since 2012 it has been incredibly successful, and this last year, we were able to open a second incubator location. But in the process of running these incubators, the biggest challenge I think we continue to recognize is that there’s an access to capital issue for entrepreneurs, and it can be even worse in some of our underserved communities. And we have three that we’ve really keep an eye on within our community, that those zip codes kind of tend to be the ones that really have struggled the most in our community, and have kind of been overlooked over the years. And so we have put programming from our incubators specifically into those communities. And what we recognized is traditional lenders don’t often help those in the underserved community, and they don’t have that way to do that. So what CDFIs do in a community is they help close that financial gap. They can spur economic growth and promote mobility where, you know, traditional lending falls short in that lane. So for us, you know, we did a lot of surveying, a lot of talking to people in the community. And you know, part of what happened is. It actually started in a post covid environment, right when we were looking at businesses that were receiving assistance through the Cares Act, and then we realized there continued to be this gap in critical funding in the state of Florida has made great inroads over the past couple of years, but we had already started into this process and recognize that for lower income zip codes. This is going to be an ongoing challenge with traditional lenders. So we started out a new 501, c3, and as you can imagine, in this being a federal program, there are a lot of regulations, a lot of processes to go through. So we did hire a consultant to help us start this process that got us on the on the road to this. And so, you know, we’ve now been able to offer some nano loans to businesses as a part of the process, and we’re already in the repayment process on that. And what we’re really looking forward to over the next few years is that we’re hoping to get our final certification in January. We’re fully on track with that. We’ve received a large grant from Treasury to make the next steps in this and working towards that certification. The other piece of it is our county government has also given us a grant that we’re using as a matching grant in the community. They gave us $75,000 to go out to the business community. And so we are currently raising matching grant funds through that so that we’ll be able to offer larger loans, where our next step is micro loans and those who would be anywhere from 2000 to 15,000 and then once we’re fully certified, and we can engage banks, then at that point as a part of the process, then we’re hoping to be able to go to those more traditional business loan sizes of somewhere between, you know, usually around $50,000 would be kind of the top end of those types of loans. But that gives businesses who are in their first five years of startup that working capital that they that they need. And again, we’re really targeting communities that would traditionally not be served by a traditional bank because of where they you know, those communities are, and because of their economic situation that they’re already in. So our goal is to try to make equity where we can in the community, and to try to balance that for everyone, so that there’s an equal opportunity. Because we do feel that entrepreneurship is the fastest way to to really create personal wealth and personal opportunity for you and your family.

Brandon Burton 27:27
Yeah, I love this idea. I’d love to see more chambers embrace this and be able to provide access to capital, funding to these, these businesses, you know, coming out of an incubator, these new businesses, I’m trying to get going. The biggest question that I have, so you addressed it, you know, how the funding, how this in, I think, in the the introduction, you had talked about your foundation. So this is how it’s within the foundation.

Tamara Fleischhaker 27:53
But this actually this, so this actually does run separately of our foundation. Oh, so yeah, just, yeah. Just to clarify our so our Foundation did help with initial startup funds. So you know, when we were trying to get those nano loans started, but we have, actually, this is its own separate 501, c3, organization now. So yeah, when we first started talking about it and how do we fund some of the initial pieces we were working on, we did use our foundation to help us with that, but at this point, it is a standalone organization, and so I think that’s what makes it a little more special as we’ve been able to move it forward. And I think that’s what makes it such an important program, is that it doesn’t rely on our foundation. Our foundation can still be dedicated to serving the mission of our overall organization, right where we talk about, you know that the foundation can magnify mission, and so that’s what we continue to work on. So this one is its own entity at this point,

Brandon Burton 28:48
awesome that. Thank you for that. Clarification. When it comes to the the Nano loans, the the soon to be micro loans that you you give out. How do you secure that? Like, what kind of is there collateral? Is there? How do you ensure that you get repayment and that it’s not just a gift?

Tamara Fleischhaker 29:06
Yes, no, yep. So, so we, you know, there is a whole comprehensive process, much like banks go through, right, looking at their financial situation, looking at the viability of that business, right? Because it’s partly the same process we use in an incubator is that business scalable. What, you know, what are the opportunities? And part of what the great part in doing this process is there’s a requirement for them to get this funding that they have to go through the technical training so they get the technical assistance that goes with it. So we’re working with these businesses. Our team over at our incubator is working with them every day to, you know, to check in and make sure that they’ve got all of the pieces of that ready. We actually, because we’ve had a great partnership with Kauffman Foundation through the incubator for several years. We have some of their programs, like the Fast Track Program, which is a great program that gets a business started on. Yeah, how do you even write a marketing plan? How do you write your business plan? And over the course of that, they’re writing all of those documents and really getting themselves on stable footing. Because the key to an incubator in any community is essentially, we say we help a business fail fast, right? If you’re going to make mistakes, do it in a safety net where you’ve got people around you that can help catch you and help get you back on track, because that’s the piece right. Businesses that are incubated, I am probably going to get the stats wrong, and those of your listeners will be like, that’s not the right stat, but I’m going to estimate that it’s about they’re 80% more successful in the first five years, whereas, you know, an average business without that kind of support network, you probably have about a, you know, 12% survival rate, and so we know that that’s already, you know, the piece to having a community that supports our entrepreneurs, and that’s a key piece, but having that opportunity for them to get that continued coaching that becomes a part of the process as well, because they don’t get their loan payments. If they don’t, you know, and have that technical assistance going on. And I think that’s the piece that makes this so special, and that’s a continuing piece, but that links it back into our incubator as we’re going forward now. The other thing that we did is we had an amazing event just recently, which was a matchmaker event, and this is where we bring in local banks. We had about 25 local banks, about 120 participants, and all of them come in and they sit down with those documents that they have, their business plans and their financial documents, and they talk to the banks about getting loans. And so the other piece is we’re teaching these businesses how to build up the what they need within their business that will help them in the future with regular, traditional loan programs. And that’s really the goal behind this, is to get them established, give them a credit history, because, more than anything, that’s what they’re missing. They don’t have a credit history, even if they had collateral. They’re a new business, right, right? It makes them risky. And so that’s that’s our goal, with all of this is really opening the door for them, for the future, for larger and other, you know, loan opportunities.

Brandon Burton 32:07
Yeah, that is fantastic. The whole point about helping these businesses fail fast, reminds me of Thomas Edison and a reporter asked him, you know, what do you think about all your failures? He’s like, I didn’t fail. I figured out 1000s of ways that a light bulb would not work, right? And that’s the whole idea. You fail fast so you can get to that solution.

Tamara Fleischhaker 32:25
Yeah, we actually have that quote on the wall in our incubator. We we went with a lot of those types of quotes as inspiration, because that’s it, right? And when you know so many people that you know, sometimes we talk about we have some serial entrepreneurs in our community too, and some of them are on their third or fourth company, because they just love that drive. Now that they’ve, you know, they’ve been so successful in their first business, they keep going on to the next. And I love seeing that.

Brandon Burton 32:48
Yeah, that’s awesome. But Tamara, as we begin to wrap things up, I wanted to ask for the listeners who are interested in taking their organization up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item would you suggest for them and trying to accomplish that goal.

Tamara Fleischhaker 33:03
So I think the first thing I would say is never think that you’re too small to try starting some of these programs. I think that’s that’s the biggest part is we say, well, we could never do what the Ocala CEP does, because we don’t have that kind of budget or that kind of staff. 13 years ago, there were five staff, and I can guarantee you, we had a small budget at the time. So I think the key to any of this is, what can you take away, what part of what we’re doing can you use, you know, if it’s, you know, from a sales tax standpoint, okay, take a look at your community. And is this something that you think with transparency and other things? Because I’ll share how we did it. I shared all the time, and I think that’s the great news about chambers, right? We talk about R and D all the time. I’m going to rip off and duplicate what somebody else is doing. And most of the things that we do truly are scalable. So even if there’s just a few of you, get a committee together, get, you know, get your board behind what you’re doing, and let them help lead the brigade for you. And what we’re doing with an incubator, you do not have to be in the situation we’re in. Get your community partners together. That’s what we do as Chamber organizations, right? We’re the catalyst. We’re the conveners. We bring people together. So get people behind you on this, whether that issue is housing, whether that is, you know, improvements in your communities, whether it’s entrepreneurship, there are so many lanes that you can bring people together, and that’s really what we do best. So I would say, don’t be afraid to try it. Just go for it. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 34:33
I love that response. I like asking everyone I have on the show, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Tamara Fleischhaker 34:45
So I think, you know, we talk about this all the time. We hear the news stories, and we see this kind of greater political divide, or so it seems. But I think what we’re finding more and more is as things seem a little more crazy in the environment. And around us, people look to their chamber. Businesses definitely look to us. And they say, Okay, we we’re asking you to lead, and I think we’re going to be called upon. We’re we’re already seeing it happening. And I’m sure chambers across the country are as well, that we’re being called upon to voice an opinion or be a part of more issues that are happening in our community, and of course, my only caution would be make sure that whatever you’re engaging in meets your mission, right that, because it’s so easy for us to have mission drift and stray away from that, but our voices matter so much in the community, and we’re going to continue to be called on so we all need to be thinking about that. What are we prepared to what is our process for engaging on issues, and what’s the right thing for our community, and how do we want to address that? As chambers,

Brandon Burton 35:47
yeah, I totally agree. But Tamara, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect or learn more about your approaches. There in Ocala. Where would you point them? What would be the best way for them to connect

Tamara Fleischhaker 36:04
with you? Well, the place that I will start them is our website. It is the OcalaCEP.com so Ocala is spelled o c, a, l, A, C, E, p.com, and you can see, we’ve got a team page there. We’re all you can find any one of us on that and make an outreach, and you’ll easily find me there. And the great news is, most of us are first name at Ocala, cep.com if you want to send an email. So again, I’m Tamara. It’s T, A, M, A, R, A, and so you can feel free to give me a call, you know, off of the website there, or you can give me an email and I’m happy to connect with you, or connect you with a member of my team who might be a better resource for you.

Brandon Burton 36:43
That’s very good, and we’ll make sure to have the website and our show notes to make it easy for people to find you guys and fantastic reach out and connect. But Tamara, this has been great having you on the show. Thank you for diving into these programs and telling us how you guys are making that secret sauce there in Ocala. But I wish you and your team Best of luck as chamber of the year.

Tamara Fleischhaker 37:05
Thank you so much. Brandon. Really appreciate the opportunity to talk to your listeners.

Brandon Burton 37:11
If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.

Get started with your own Chamber Podcast and shortcut your learning curve with the Chamber Podcast Course offered by Chamber Chat Podcast.
Have you considered the many benefits of hosting a podcast for your Chamber? The options, leverage, and possibilities that a podcast offers are virtually endless. Download my FREE Chamber Podcasting Guide to learn how to start your own Chamber podcast!

2025 Chamber of the Year Finalist-Greater Fort Wayne Inc. with John Urbahns

Miles Burdine Chamber Chat Podcast promo image.

Below is an auto-generated transcription. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.

Feel free to join our Chamber Chat Champions Facebook Group to discuss this episode and to share your own experiences and tips with other Chamber Champions.

Join the Facebook Group

Brandon Burton 0:00
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.

Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your hosts Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

Our title sponsor for this episode is Bringing Local Back. Remember when your community could turn to a local TV station or newspaper for the latest updates and affordable ads? Those days may be fading, but the need for local connection remains. That’s why we created Bringing Local Back, a game changing platform that restores the local visibility and advertising power to your community. It’s more than just tech. It’s about driving engagement and creating new revenue for your chamber. Ready to see the future visit bringinglocalback.com to schedule your demo today. This is the future of local commerce.

You’re joining us for a special episode in our 2025 ACCE chamber of the year finalist series. And our guest for this episode is John or bonds. John is the CEO of Greater Fort Wayne Inc, and of course, he’s representing a Greater Fort Wayne Inc as a chamber of the year finalist. But he joined the organization in 2014 and at the time, was serving as executive vice president economic development, before taking on the CEO role in 2019 under his leadership, Greater Fort Wayne Inc has assisted with over 200 business expansions and relocations, resulting in more than 13,500 new jobs and $600 million in new payroll. Previously, John was the Director of Community Development for the City of Fort Wayne, managing strategic planning, redevelopment and economic development initiatives. John has led key community projects such as the landing electric works and the Bradley hotel, while also engaging with residents and leaders to shape Allen County’s future. He holds a degree in urban planning and environmental design from Ball State University, and is an AICP certified urban planner, John, I want to welcome you back to chamber chat podcast. Congratulations to you and your team for being selected as a chamber of the year finalists. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the chamber champions, and if you would share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

John Urbahns 2:41
Hello, Brandon, thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure to be back. Love talking about our team. Our team is excited about this opportunity. We think we’ve done a great job in transforming our community, and really all of northeast Indiana, so excited about it. You know, I’m a I’m just a proud Hoosier. I’m a proud father of three great kids here that are all making choices to stay in our community at the end of the day. That’s that’s the biggest job in the world that I have, is making sure that every kid has the opportunity to have a great opportunity in Fort Wayne, in Allen County, and just continue to thrive. So excited to be here. That’s

Brandon Burton 3:22
right. You’re you’re living the work that you do, right, keeping your kids into the community. That’s great. That’s great. Well, tell us a little bit about Greater Fort Wayne Inc, to kind of set the perspective for us as we start our discussion today. Give us an idea of the size staff, scope of work. You guys are involved with budget, that sort of things Greater

John Urbahns 3:42
Fort Wayne ink, you know, a lot of people think, Oh, you’ve been around forever. I joined the organization in 2014 January, 2014 when we formed the organization, Oh, right. We merged our chamber of commerce, which was 100 years old, our Economic Development Alliance, which was a public private partnership doing economic development, which was about 20 years old, and then our leadership Fort Wayne program, which is at the time, was about little over 30 years old, and merged those together, the business community really said, we need to pull these assets together to do economic development, to do chamber activities, to do leadership programming, so that we can take on bigger and bolder projects in the community. So we’re about 1111, and a half years old as an organization, but you know, really serving as the economic development entity and the chamber for all of Allen County. So not just Fort Wayne, but New Haven Hunter town, some of the smaller communities, 660 square miles, is our is our jurisdiction, but we work very closely with those regional counties in northeast Indiana.

Brandon Burton 4:46
All right, very good. But how many Chamber members and staff? Yeah,

John Urbahns 4:51
so we have, we have 14. We just passed the 1400 mark on membership in the community. We’ve got 20 staff members. But. Budget of about $3.4 million that that is made up of, you know, membership revenue, dues, a non dues revenue, just lot of great things going on. A lot of great support from our community. In what we’re doing as a community, we’re seeing a lot of growth, which is what you want to see as a chambers and an economic development agency, and really feel that the work we’re doing is helping drive that.

Brandon Burton 5:23
Yeah, very cool. Well, on these chamber of the year finalist episodes, I like to spend the majority of our time really diving into the two programs that were submitted on your chamber of the year application. So we’ll take a quick break, and when we get back, we’ll dive in deep on those two programs.

Joe Duemig
Hi, I’m Joe and I’m Rose, and we’re the founders of App My Community, a mobile app that can be customized to meet the unique needs of your chamber of commerce.

Rose Duemig
When we started App My Community, we envisioned a tool that would help communities thrive by simplifying communication and enhancing engagement, Chambers of Commerce face unique challenges, and we’re here to help you tackle them.

Joe Duemig
App My Community helps the Evergreen Area Chamber of Commerce to create an app that keeps tourists informed, even when their office is closed, they provide 24/7 access to local business information, which helps support the local economy and community engagement.

Rose Duemig
In Rocky Mountain House, we helped Rocky Chamber create an app with dynamic itineraries and digital resources for tourists, increasing local business engagement. The app has become an essential tool for the community, promoting events and boosting visibility for local merchants.

Joe Duemig
Today, we empower more than 200 Chambers of Commerce campgrounds and RV resorts to streamline communication, informing members about events, sharing business updates and providing a digital hub for the community all in one convenient

Rose Duemig
app. When you partner with App My Community, our team works closely with you to create an app that meets your Chamber’s unique needs. As your community grows, our app evolves with you. We are here to ensure you engage effectively with your members and streamline your operations.

Joe Duemig
Schedule a demo today AppMyCommunity.com. We can’t wait to meet you.

App My Community creates mobile apps that allow you to engage directly with your community. Enhance chamber membership by providing a unique advertising and communication channel to residents and visitors. Not just a member directory, App My Community has the tools to be useful to residents on a daily basis. Learn more at appmycommunity.com/chamberchat.

Clint Nessmith
Are you ready to take your organization’s funding to the next level? Hi. I’m Clint Nessmith, CEO of Resource Development Group as a chamber of commerce or economic development organization leader, I know you understand the value of working with experts who understand your world, and that’s exactly what RDG does best. For over 30 years, RDG has specialized in fundraising for EDOs and chambers. We bring cutting edge strategies tailored to your organization, whether you’re just starting out or gearing up for yet another new funding cycle. Importantly, our firm executives are hands on from start to finish, from the feasibility study to the successful conclusion of your fundraising campaign, and our team brings deep industry roots and national expertise to every engagement, no matter the size of your community. RDG delivers data driven, innovative revenue solutions, reinforcing ROI to investors and making sure your vision becomes reality. At RDG, we proudly build organizations that build communities. Visit us today at RDGFundraising.com and let us partner with you building a stronger future for your organization and the community you are working to grow and develop?

Brandon Burton 8:28
All right, John, we’re back, as I mentioned before the break, we’re we’re diving in on the two programs from your your chamber of the year application. I know one of them has, you know, obviously, a focus on economic development and another one on talent attraction. Do you have a preference on which one you’d like to cover first?

John Urbahns 8:47
I’m good with either one. You know, our role, our mission, is about building nationally recognized economy, but our Why is really about people and capital. So we always talk to people about it. It’s about people setting the environment where people want to be, where people want to move to, and where capital wants to be deployed, whether that’s locally, nationally or internationally. So both these programs tie very, very much into our why on the people and capital side. So people are probably the most important. So let’s just jump in on the people side.

Brandon Burton 9:17
All right, so let’s do that so your your onboard program, tell us what that’s about. And kind of, I always like to know what the need was, it was addressed, and how you guys went about answering

John Urbahns 9:27
that need. Yeah. So one of the one of the areas that we started working was onboard Fort Wayne. We’ve seen a lot of growth in our community. We We had a lot of years of, kind of dying, the slow death, of negative domestic migration and population decrease with some of the work that we’ve done to drive investment in the community, we’ve now seen eight straight years of positive domestic migration. If you go back 1990 when they started tracking this every year was negative until eight years ago, and that’s because we chose to invest in ourselves. Started to make progress in that environment, and as we started to see that increased domestic migration, we started seeing a lot of influx from people from throughout the nation coming in to Fort Wayne and Allen County. How are we going to welcome them? How are we going to really come alongside them and help them get connected within the community? So we created the onboard program about five years ago, and have slowly built out different segments of it. And over the last couple of years, we built, we built in the intern experience and best in class, which are two of the two of the pieces that we submitted for the chamber of the year application. So the intern experience, really diving in with interns and companies. They’re going to come here to work and hopefully have a great experience at their company. How do they fall in love with the community? And that’s what we stepped in to help do. So each summer, we do between five and one year nine, nine weeks straight of just social activities for the interns, to get them connected to each other, to get them connected to the community. One of the keys is we, you know, we survey them early on. You know, what’s the chances of you seeing yourself living in Fort Wayne post graduation in both years, it’s been a little right around 60% of the kids see themselves living here. And these are kids that are coming from all over the US, right? We part of the survey. We look at where they coming from one year, 25 states. One year, 23 states, multiple countries, of kids coming in from across the US to do internships here. So these college interns? Is that college intern? Yep. So if only 60% can see themselves, living here, that’s a challenge for us. By the end of the summer, both years, it’s increased to well over 80% of the kids we when we do the post program survey, 80% over 80% say they could see themselves living in Fort Wayne, Indiana. And there’s a lot, and we ask them why we you know, it comes down to cost of living, opportunities, connectedness, not just within the in Fort Wayne, but to outline, you know, larger metros. So we feel the program has been very successful. Our companies feel great about it. It lets them focus on the day to day, you know, like, let’s make sure they have a great work environment that they like our company, but we help them fall in love with the community. And maybe there’s some connections that are made while they’re here over the summer, and they and they fall in love in general, and have those strong connections as well. So it’s it’s creating that connection to the community. We parlayed that last year into the best in class program and said, All right, we’re getting great results from these college interns, but how do we get to kids before they go off to college? How do we build that pipeline? Just like a company builds a pipeline, we need to build a pipeline. So last year, we worked with all 17 high schools in Allen County and really sat down with your principals, your guidance counselors, and said, Give us your top kids, your 10 to 15 kids, not necessarily one through 10, one through 15 in the grades, but who are the leaders? Who are the kids that are going to go off and maybe never come back? And we pulled them together and said, give them to us for a night. So we had about 250 kids come together last year, and we had this best in class event where we talked about what’s going to happen over the next four years in our community, right? How is it going to change? We had some young entrepreneurs come in and talk to them about how they’ve chosen to make their best life here in Fort Wayne and Allen County. We talked about the business environment, right? So many kids, they don’t. They know about what’s going on the community, but they don’t know about industry. So we highlighted the key industry sectors and the great job opportunities that they can have here in the community. And then at the end, we wrapped it up with a cost of living index, right? We had, we had kids at tables, and we gave every kid a different at the table, a different city, and we started to help them understand, or they, I guess they under they figured out themselves. Hey, if I move off to some of these bigger cities, am I going to be able to afford to live the way I would like to live? Can I have? Can I own a car? Can I own a home? How much am I going to be able to go out? How many times can I go to Starbucks or the local coffee shop? And they started to understand Fort Wayne, Indiana was the best place for them to grow up. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 14:34
my son is our oldest. He graduated high school last year, so his eyes are being opened right now as he’s looking at cost of living, and what a call to reality. You’ve got these 250 of the greatest leaders in your area, you know, coming out of high school. Then to be able to give them this, this real life metric of this is one of just one of the real positive. Of reasons why you’d want to choose our community to stay, you know,

John Urbahns 15:04
yes. So you always wonder, did I make an impression? What? What’s the results of this? Right? We wanted these kids to not just know themselves, but ultimately go off to college and be our sales people while they’re out at, you know, universities throughout the Midwest, throughout the US, we had calls the next day from parents and said, I don’t know exactly what you said to my kids last night, but they were leaving. They were leaving after high school. They were going off to a couple of cases, Indiana University, Purdue University, pick your new mission. They were going there, and they were never coming back, and after last night, they said they want to come back. And that, to me, says we made a difference. That’s really cool, right? We’re driving change. We’re changing the mindset of the young folks about the community, and they’re starting to see the great opportunities that they can have. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 15:59
and so going backwards a little bit with the intern program, I think that’s a missed opportunity that so many chambers and communities have where interns come in and so much of the focus is on, you know, building the the work experience, and connecting with the company and and we miss that opportunity to connect them with the community and To get them to get them to fall in love with the community, you

John Urbahns 16:23
have to engage them. You have to get them to fall in love. You know, we’ve we’ve done a lot of work in our community about reinventing, reinvesting ourselves, building up our downtown. We do a business survey. Every five years, we hire a polling firm. It’s not just a survey we do. We are a polling firm. We do a statistical analysis of it, and 95% of the businesses believe we’re on the right track with where we’re headed. The number one issue in the community that they think affecting talent, attraction, retention, and these are companies across the community, is downtown and riverfront revitalization. So we know we’re on the right track, that we’re hitting the right points. Now we need to get those kids that out and enjoy those things and see those things while they’re here. So feel really good about it.

Brandon Burton 17:13
That’s great. Well, let’s shift gears to the big economic development program, and the I’ll say economic development. Win that. You guys are going through it at the moment. Tell us about that. Yeah,

John Urbahns 17:28
the, you know, I mentioned people in capital. The other side of our business is the capital side, right? Economic development. How are we creating the environment to attract capital into our market and get locals to invest as well. But last year was was a big year for us. We had $3.66 billion in building permits in Allen County. Put that in perspective, if you go back to 2012 so about 13 years ago, we were averaging about $500 million of building permits a year. So we’ve seen dramatic growth in that we hit a billion in 2017 and we haven’t looked back from that. So capital is a big piece for us. The other thing we had looked at through our economic development strategy was land assembly, and how do we make sure that we have opportunities for companies to grow? We saw the need for land in our community. We had an opportunity with a project that came to us from our electrical provider and said, Hey, we’ve got a company that’s that’s looking at our market. We’ve done a lot of great things to improve our water supply and our access to water and on the electric side as well. So ultimately, we landed a $2 billion Google data center, right? It’s their largest AI data center in the world that’s being built here in Fort Wayne, and we had a challenge to figure out how to get 900 acres of land for that development. Ultimately, this could end up being a 10 plus billion dollar investment as the multiple phases grow out in our community. And these are, these are tech jobs in our most depressed area of the community, right? So we can come back to that, but there’s gonna be a lot of great spin off effects from this that we’re gonna be able to utilize. But we’ve talked a lot as a chamber world about chamber foundations over the last several years. Do you have a chamber if you don’t have a chamber foundation? When you’re asked that question at ACC, I feel like everybody’s like, Well, why don’t you have one yet? You need to look at one. So we have one. We’ve been, you know, using it in different ways. But one of the things we had to respond to this, this about a year and a half ago, when this project started, was we had a partner that was going to work on land assembly, and it wasn’t going well with the company, and the company came to us and said, Hey, can you help us acquire the property? And we said, Yes, we’re going to do that. We’re going to, let’s, let’s figure out how to do that. So we utilized some funding in our chamber foundation to go out and acquire a. The 900 acres of property so that we could move it forward. We acquired that 900 acres of property in under 90 days. Wow, which is amazing as a community, and we couldn’t have done it if we didn’t have the chamber foundation infrastructure in place to go and do that. I think the other thing you have to look at from you know, you think about all the horizon points. You think about catalytic leadership and pulling people together. This property was located not just in the city of Fort Wayne. It was also in the city of New Haven, and it was an unincorporated Allen County. We took the role as a developer to go acquire that property. But then also, you know, petition for the vacation of a county road, we had to get the city of New Haven to dis annex about 60 acres of the site that was in one community, so that the city of Fort Wayne could annex it and annex the rest of the property and have that in their tax base. Now, you go to a mayor and tell him, I need you to dis annex 60 acres so that your neighbor can take it. Yeah, right, that that’s a tough conversation. But he jumped right in and said, Hey, let’s figure out how to do it, because this is a win for our community. It’s a huge win. Yeah? Mindset, right? If you go back 510, years ago, this ends up in a lawsuit, and frankly, the project doesn’t happen, but we had that buy in, and it’s because we’ve got the trusted relationships with all the different partners to pull it together so that it was a win win for each of the communities, because he knows his community is going to grow because of this right he’s right next to it. He’s going to see a lot of great growth, even if the even if that project is not directly within his political jurisdiction, right? Companies don’t care about political lines. They care about getting projects done. We used our foundation, we acted in a way, to speed a business to get this win for the entire community,

Brandon Burton 22:01
yeah. I mean, Moses split the Red Sea. I mean, you guys worked on getting a city into D annex, part of the land. I mean, it’s a miracle, as far as I’m concerned, but being able to be that convener, so like you said, be that trust. You know, have that trust in the community. Be that convener to really lead a project that’s going to benefit all of the surrounding communities as well. It’s, I mean, that’s the perfect position and role that a chamber should be playing. And then you’ve got the added benefit of being able to access your your chamber Foundation to help, you know, get the ball over the line, so to speak. Great testimony on being conveners and having a chamber foundation to see a big project come together that’s super exciting.

John Urbahns 22:48
And this is going to have, you know, I mentioned that, I said I’d come back to it. You know, this isn’t, you know, part of the community that has seen the most disinvestment or the lack of investment over several decades. We now in that, in that part of the community, have our first market rate subdivision being built for the first time in 40 years. Wow, market rate subdivision being built with the with the with the project, and the TIF district and the city being able to work to reinvest dollars within that community, to look at neighborhood commercial corridor projects, and we’re looking at other industrial properties that need to be repurposed in that area. This project now gives us the opportunity to really dive in and make some really big, transformational change in that part of the community. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 23:36
that’s awesome. So just a side note or comment on the chamber foundation. For those who don’t have a foundation, may be curious, how do you how do you guys fund your foundation? How did that? How did the funds become available to be able to fund a project like this? Yeah, we,

John Urbahns 23:56
you know, our our foundation, our c3 organization, is all of our fee for service agreements with city, Fort Wayne, City, New Haven, the Airport Authority, the county commissioners, they flow through that as well. But then we’ve used that to assemble dollars. The dollars we used for this project date back 25 years when the business community raised funds to help the city finalize an industrial park, and as part of that, those business funds that went into it as land sold, came back to us, into that entity or that foundation, to reinvest and basically evergreen, so that we could continue to do similar investments about eight years ago, we use that funds, those funds to help the city acquire another 145 acres and turned around and sold that to a large, large facility here in town. Again, we got the money back, and then we used it in this case. And then. Um, when this project closed, the funds came back into that. So those, those funds are recycling and coming back to us to now. Now we’re looking at new opportunities. How are we going to invest that to again position the community for growth from an economic development perspective? So those rate, those funds were initially raised as from the private sector. There’s other funds that you know because of this project, we were able to get several people that were involved in the project to provide some additional funds to it so help grow it because of the success of that project. So we’re just trying to continue to grow it and make sure that we can leverage it multiple times, right? It didn’t, it didn’t help that project, not just that project back in 1999 it helped us with multiple projects along the way, and it’s going to help us continue to move things forward. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 25:56
it’s a great framework of how to utilize a foundation. And for those who are thinking about it, it’s a great exposure to one

John Urbahns 26:05
way we used it. I know that others use it a lot of different ways. We can all learn from each other. I think that’s the key that I like about ACC, that I like about this process. We all learn from each other. We’re all doing great things. We just might be doing different things. Absolutely, we

Brandon Burton 26:21
all have different communities. So John, for those listening who are wanting to take their chamber to the next level working towards that goal, what kind of tip or action item might you leave with them towards trying to accomplish that? I

John Urbahns 26:37
think one of the things that that I would tell all of my my peers, you know, those in this world, and I’ve learned this, you know, again, very recently, that we have to be we’re that we’re the future of the community. We’re looking out ahead. Make sure you’re having those conversations with your key businesses about the future, right? So often, we all get kind of bogged down in the day to day making sure that projects are moving forward, programs are moving forward. We could spend our entire day focused on the here and now and making sure that goes smooth. But we need to make sure that we’re having the conversations about the future, right we are. We are the future of our community. We’re going to drive that. We’re going to be the catalytic leader. We’re going to be the futurist. Make sure that you’re bringing your business, your key business leaders and government leaders along with you. In that regard, don’t lose sight of the future. Make sure that you have those conversations. Is what I would leave with everybody. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 27:39
and said, Don’t lose sight of the future. I always like asking that question, too, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

John Urbahns 27:48
Yeah, you know, I can only speak from for my chamber, but we are. I’ve seen the change in this community. Yeah, I came here almost 30 years ago, and it wasn’t a community that I moved to to spend a career. It was a community I moved to for a job out of college, and we started to make change, and chambers need to be key in that role. If you’re not, if you’re not affecting change in your community, you’re not doing it justice, and you’re not doing yourself justice. So the future, the future of chambers, is bright, but we have to make it bright.

Brandon Burton 28:26
Yeah, I like that. Need to be affecting change in your

John Urbahns 28:30
community. We, we often say, we, we need to, we need to make the change happen, and not let the change happen to us. Yeah, so many times that happens.

Brandon Burton 28:41
And you know, when it comes to change, a lot of people fear it, because so often the change does happen to us, but if you’re being forward thinking and driving the change, you’ve got a lot more you know, direction on what the future looks like when you’re driving it instead of being acted upon. So yeah, great point. Well, John, for those listening who might want to reach out and connect with you about either these programs or how you guys are doing things there. Greater, Fort Wayne Inc, where would you point them? What would be the best way for them to reach out and connect?

John Urbahns 29:12
I’d point them to our website. GreaterFortWayneInc.com, just just, you know, Google, us make that your That’s right, your browser choice, if you would please. But Greater Fort Wayne inc.com, all of our contact information is there. We are happy to have conversations about any of the programs we’re doing, any of the projects we’re here to help each other, and we definitely, we definitely subscribe to that. You know, I talked about, we talked about the Google project. We’ve coached probably now seven or eight other communities on how to handle these big projects and pull them off some of my peers that are probably listening here, we’ve had some conversations, and it’s been very valuable to them, and it’s valuable to us when we can go and talk about others. So. Go to the website. I will tell you that we are literally in the middle of a of a complete over overhaul of our website. So what you see today is what, not what you will see at the end of July or the first of August, but go to our website. Reach out to us and income back. Come see us.

Brandon Burton 30:19
Yeah, very good. And if you have trouble finding it, go to Google.

John Urbahns 30:24
Go to Google. It’s gonna be easy. I love the plug.

Brandon Burton 30:26
Well, John, this has been great having you back on Chamber Chat Podcast. I appreciate you spending time with us. I wish you and your team best of luck with chamber of the year. And you know, keep making those big swings and big movements in your community. You guys are doing awesome.

John Urbahns 30:40
Thank you. I appreciate it. Brandon.

Brandon Burton 30:43
If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.

Get started with your own Chamber Podcast and shortcut your learning curve with the Chamber Podcast Course offered by Chamber Chat Podcast.
Have you considered the many benefits of hosting a podcast for your Chamber? The options, leverage, and possibilities that a podcast offers are virtually endless. Download my FREE Chamber Podcasting Guide to learn how to start your own Chamber podcast!

2025 Chamber of the Year Finalist-Sarasota Chamber with Heather Kasten

Miles Burdine Chamber Chat Podcast promo image.

Below is an auto-generated transcription. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.

Feel free to join our Chamber Chat Champions Facebook Group to discuss this episode and to share your own experiences and tips with other Chamber Champions.

Join the Facebook Group

Brandon Burton 0:00
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.

Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your hosts Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

Our title sponsor for this episode is Bringing Local Back. Remember when your community could turn to a local TV station or newspaper for the latest updates and affordable ads? Those days may be fading, but the need for local connection remains. That’s why we created Bringing Local Back, a game changing platform that restores the local visibility and advertising power to your community. It’s more than just tech. It’s about driving engagement and creating new revenue for your chamber. Ready to see the future visit bringinglocalback.com to schedule your demo today. This is the future of local commerce.

You’re joining us for a special episode in our 2025 ACCE chamber of the year finalist series. And our guest for this episode is Heather Kasten. Heather is the president and CEO of the Greater Sarasota Chamber of Commerce in Florida, with more than 14 years of experience in the Sarasota region, Heather previously served as a President CEO of the Lakewood Ranch Business Alliance. She has a diverse background, having worked for Eli Lilly Pharmaceuticals and six flag theme parks in various regional management roles. Heather is deeply engaged in the community, serving on the board of career source, Suncoast United Way Suncoast and the Education Foundation of Sarasota County. She is also active in several local advisory councils, including those for the USF Muma College of Business and the 26th West Entrepreneurship Center. Heather holds an MBA from Webster University and a business administration degree from the University of Iowa. Outside of her professional duties, she enjoys reading, boating, traveling and spending time with her family, but Heather, it’s great to have you back on chamber chat podcast. Welcome and congratulations for being selected. For those who may be familiar, they were chamber the year finalists in 2024 so this is two years in a row being selected as a finalist. So huge congratulations to you and your team. But wanted to give you a chance to say hello and to share something interesting about yourself so everyone listening can get to know you a little better.

Heather Kasten 2:42
Yeah, well, Brandon, thank you so much. It’s we’re so grateful to you for hosting this podcast, which is so informative. I really enjoy listening, and we are truly excited. Our team and board of directors are over the moon about us being a finalist again for ACCE, the Metro Chamber division this year. So we’re excited to go to Philly. We’ve got a good, good sized group of us traveling out there to attend the conference and the convention, and hopefully you’re going to bring something, bring that big trophy home. We’ll see that.

Brandon Burton 3:19
Yeah, yeah, there’s some. There’s something to be said about coming in numbers to the conference. I remember a few years ago in the Conway, Arkansas chamber one, and they had, like, I want to say, like, two full tables full, just packed full of people from Conway. And it was, it was pretty cool. So I’m glad you’re bringing a great representation. That’s awesome.

Heather Kasten 3:41
Yeah. And you know, as far as something unique about me, I feel like I’m, you know, a cat with nine lives in that I really have worked in many different industries, from theme parks, which we talked about last year, some of the funny duties work as a regional sales manager for six likes theme parks, and then in the pharmaceutical realm, through Lily and women’s health and the neuroscience division, and then landing in chamber work. And have been doing this, this work, for about 16 years now. And absolutely love it. Love just being able to serve and support the businesses in our community, which, let’s face it, they’re the engine that power any local economy, or the the local businesses,

Brandon Burton 4:26
absolutely. Well, give us some perspective with the greater Sarasota chamber. You mentioned being more regional, but give us an idea of size, staff, scope of work. You guys are involved with budget. That’ll kind of set the stage as we get into the programs that we talk about today.

Heather Kasten 4:43
Sure, we are 104 year old organization here in Sarasota, Florida. We work with a little over 1500 regional businesses throughout Sarasota and Manatee counties that represent. About 60,000 employees throughout the region. Our team here, I always like to say we’re a small but mighty team of 15 individuals who are just a committed, dedicated, passionate group of people who show up here every day working to support our local businesses. We have a very active Foundation, as well as as the chamber work that we do, and I know we’re going to get into some of those programs later. Those programs are truly funded through our foundation, very

Brandon Burton 5:35
cool. So I’m hopefully, as we go through the conversation today, we can pull more on the foundation. And I know there’s a lot of chambers out there that are trying to learn more about foundations, if they don’t already have one, seeing how they can deploy a foundation, how it can really be beneficial in their community. And so hopefully your experience will will be able to tap into that as we dive in today. So with these chamber of the year finalist episodes. I love to spend the majority of the time talking about the two programs that were submitted on your chamber of the year application. So when we get back from our quick break, we’ll dive into those programs and learn more about what it is you guys submitted on your application this year.

Joe Duemig
Hi, I’m Joe and I’m Rose, and we’re the founders of App My Community, a mobile app that can be customized to meet the unique needs of your chamber of commerce.

Rose Duemig
When we started App My Community, we envisioned a tool that would help communities thrive by simplifying communication and enhancing engagement, Chambers of Commerce face unique challenges, and we’re here to help you tackle them.

Joe Duemig
App My Community helps the Evergreen Area Chamber of Commerce to create an app that keeps tourists informed, even when their office is closed, they provide 24/7 access to local business information, which helps support the local economy and community engagement.

Rose Duemig
In Rocky Mountain House, we helped Rocky Chamber create an app with dynamic itineraries and digital resources for tourists, increasing local business engagement. The app has become an essential tool for the community, promoting events and boosting visibility for local merchants.

Joe Duemig
Today, we empower more than 200 Chambers of Commerce campgrounds and RV resorts to streamline communication, informing members about events, sharing business updates and providing a digital hub for the community all in one convenient

Rose Duemig
app. When you partner with App My Community, our team works closely with you to create an app that meets your Chamber’s unique needs. As your community grows, our app evolves with you. We are here to ensure you engage effectively with your members and streamline your operations.

Joe Duemig
Schedule a demo today AppMyCommunity.com. We can’t wait to meet you.

App My Community creates mobile apps that allow you to engage directly with your community. Enhance chamber membership by providing a unique advertising and communication channel to residents and visitors. Not just a member directory, App My Community has the tools to be useful to residents on a daily basis. Learn more at appmycommunity.com/chamberchat.

Clint Nessmith
Are you ready to take your organization’s funding to the next level? Hi. I’m Clint Nessmith, CEO of Resource Development Group as a chamber of commerce or economic development organization leader, I know you understand the value of working with experts who understand your world, and that’s exactly what RDG does best. For over 30 years, RDG has specialized in fundraising for EDOs and chambers. We bring cutting edge strategies tailored to your organization, whether you’re just starting out or gearing up for yet another new funding cycle. Importantly, our firm executives are hands on from start to finish, from the feasibility study to the successful conclusion of your fundraising campaign, and our team brings deep industry roots and national expertise to every engagement, no matter the size of your community. RDG delivers data driven, innovative revenue solutions, reinforcing ROI to investors and making sure your vision becomes reality. At RDG, we proudly build organizations that build communities. Visit us today at RDGFundraising.com and let us partner with you building a stronger future for your organization and the community you are working to grow and develop?

Brandon Burton 9:02
All right, Heather, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re diving into the two programs from your chamber of the year application. I understand one of the programs is around career and workforce development. Do you like to tell us what that is and dive into what the I always like to know what the origins are and how it’s evolved to what it is today.

Heather Kasten 9:23
Yeah. So the exciting thing Career Edge is our workforce and talent initiative that has been around for coming up on 14 years. And this was really formed 14 years ago to address some, some tremendous gaps in our workforce, our local workforce. I always like to say career, just like a three legged stool. It takes funders to be able to fund the work that we do. It takes educational partners and providers to train and then it takes the participant, the individual, who is actually willing to go through the program and come out the other end. End the what we submitted this year for ACCE was just the work and the results of Career Edge. Every year we have a third party evaluator come in and really do a deep dive into, you know, the wage increases that individuals experienced. They validate all of the data that we that we provide. And so it’s not the Sarasota chamber beating our chests saying, Oh, look at the work we’ve done. This is, again, an independent evaluator looking at this work. Last year, we deployed over $330,000 in workforce grants and training and upskilling grants, and we train just shy of 500 local individuals. So, you know the So, what of that is you, if you think of someone working a job that really doesn’t have a career pathway, a minimum wage job, it could be at a fast food restaurant, and they, we put them through one of our trainings, which is in five industry segments. So the trades, electrical, plumbing, HVAC, transportation and logistics, automotive, healthcare, manufacturing, those are all the the industry segments that we serve. So think about someone working a fast food job. We fully fund putting them through the CNA training. They get their certification, and then we place them with a health care member of our chamber. So it’s a win for these employers too, because as a member of the Sarasota chamber, they’re getting first dibs at this talent. As far as the individual, you think about just the change in the trajectory of their income earning potential over the course of their lifetime, and the the economic impact, both to to their own family and to the community as a whole. It really does put them on a pathway, whether it be it healthcare or think of an electrician that has many different certifications and levels. Same thing with plumbing and HVAC, it really does provide a career pathway for these folks to make some really good money and and, you know, be able to live a wonderful life here in Sarasota.

Brandon Burton 12:16
Yeah, so I like how you talked about the three parts that go into a program like this, between the funding, the educational partners, or who’s going to teach what we’re trying to preach here, and then the participants. So could you speak to a little bit about how you pulled like, how did you gather the participants? How did you reach out to them? How did you recruit those who would be the educational partners and talk about the funding for it as

Heather Kasten 12:41
well, sure. And you know, the exciting part, and the Chamber’s role is really kind of the unifier and the convener of those three pieces, but for the chamber, you know that that convening would not be happening, and so we, we play such a key role in that. But let’s start with the funding, we go out every year and sing for our supper. We work with many local foundations, some national foundations, some bank foundations to apply for these grants, and that’s the money that we have to work with each year we’ve been really fortunate. We have two local foundations that absolutely believe in the impact. They’ve seen it directly in this community, and they are substantial funders to the program. The participants through our chamber, you know, we work with, we probably have 200 nonprofits that are members of our chamber, where, when we’re putting up one of these. We call them a fast track program, where in like eight to 12 weeks, someone can get trained. When we are about ready to launch a fast track for instance, we have one coming up in automotive, electrical, and we put that out to our nonprofit partners. We have used the press to, you know, put out press releases and and social media posts. We partner with our faith based organizations. We we get the word out pretty well, and then these participants log on to our website, they fill out an application, and then they’re vetted. And then, you know, we take a class, usually of about 15 individuals to put them through this training and the chamber we play a pivotal role in that we really do Shepherd these folks through the program. These are individuals that have, they have more things on their plate than than others. And, you know, car breaks down, childcare issues, things like that, and we, we really are instrumental in in helping them to get to class and to have child care so that they can participate in the program.

Brandon Burton 14:53
That’s awesome. So for the those that are participating, sounds like there’s an application for. Process you selected in this example, 15 for the the automotive certification. Is there any fee or anything for those participants, or is it fully funded through the foundation and the grants? Or how does that structured?

Heather Kasten 15:13
It is fully funded so they, you know, they’re they do have some skin in the game in that there are some fees. For instance, in healthcare, there’s some vaccinations and things that they have to get on their own. But for the most part, you know, 98% of this training is fully funded, and so we do it. That is a big job, is to really bet the people who are serious this can’t be, you know, Grandma Jones wanting her grandson to go through this program, you know, we we have to make sure that, you know, that these participants are committed. We have to be a good steward of this money that we’ve been granted.

Brandon Burton 15:53
Yeah, so you mentioned that having that third party evaluation and seeing the the wage increases. Can you share maybe just a couple success stories you’ve seen out of that third party evaluation.

Heather Kasten 16:05
Absolutely, you know, on average, last last year, we saw the average wage increase of folks coming through the program was over $9 an hour. And you start doing the math on that, you know, times eight hours a day. You know, just to make it round numbers, that’s $100 more a day that they’re making. You think of, you know, 2020, working days in a month. That’s 2000 more dollars. You just start doing the math, and it is absolutely exponential, the money that someone is earning because of these programs. And again, this is, you know, for a lot of people, this is their first generation of being trained. And when we host these graduations, Brandon, it’s, it’s just heartwarming. Their whole family comes. They might as well be graduating, you know, from an Ivy League school. It’s that meaningful for their family. That

Brandon Burton 17:03
is really cool. I love hearing that. I love hearing the life changing impact that programs like this can make. So programs like this, like Career Edge, obviously help employers in the community find that talent where they’re able to continue performing their you know, their mission as a business, whatever it may be, but that’s only one aspect of it. I know in certain communities, housing can be an issue too, where you may have people that want to work there, but they live too far away, that it doesn’t justify, you know, the commute coming in, but housing is makes it difficult to attract that talent as well. So let’s shift gears into your second program that you guys submitted on your application around affordable housing and how that plays into this big picture.

Heather Kasten 17:52
Yeah, you know, like many communities, Brandon throughout the United States, our community is no different. Starting back, you know, when COVID we had 1000 people a day moving to the state of Florida. It has softened a little bit to, you know, around 700 people a day. But when you have that big of an influx of people, it just the the laws of supply and demand. It made it really hard. People were moving to the state, you know, cashing out in California, you know, one bedroom house for a million dollars, coming to Florida, paying cash and really pricing out all of our young professionals. And you know what I call our community heroes, the teachers, the firefighters, the policemen not being able to to find affordable housing here in our community. And so in 2022 our chairman of the board, you know, we really, he really had made it, you know, laid down the gauntlet that we are going to take a very proactive approach to affordable housing. And what we did was we hosted our first affordable housing Summit, and that would have been back in 2023 we partnered with our largest employer, Sarasota Memorial Hospital. We had over 200 business leaders attend. And really that summit was really focused on drilling down on the needs. This is not we’re not talking about folks who are on federal aid. These are working individuals, and so that was from that summit we took, okay, here we know we have a problem. It’s now the business community’s problem. So now what are we going to do about it? The Chamber went about we really wanted to drill down to investigate, like, who are having these struggles, we surveyed our young professionals. We had over 300 responses to a survey, and the results were just really disheartening. We had numerous over 30% of our young professionals saying they were contemplating leaving the area because they weren’t able to find affordable housing. We had over. 40% driving 40 miles a day to come to work, and as you know, that clogs up our roads and causes transportation issues when people can’t live by where they work. So we went about putting together a second summit, again, hosted back at Sarasota Memorial, where we brought in some experts. We brought in someone from the Florida Housing Coalition to assess what are some best practices. We brought down someone from Pinellas County, Florida, who is probably about five to 10 years ahead of us in the proactive nature of of tackling affordable housing. We hosted a second summit, and then we also took a very intentional approach with our city government and fought very hard hundreds of hours into attending City Commission meetings to back some zoning text, amendments, change, changes that would allow for greater density those after Many, many, many, many hours of meetings. The City Commission did vote to allow for greater density. And what that means is that a developer on one acre of ground, instead of being limited to building five units, of which he needs to charge $5 million a unit, when you increase the density, you could have 100 units at 200,000 and so we’ve already seen over 202,000 units, just because we fought for those zoning text amendments of affordable units that’ll be coming online here in the next two to three years. They’re going through, you know, that permitting process, they’re starting to come out of the ground. So again, if not for the Sarasota chamber, would these zoning text amendments have have gotten over the goal line. We also

Brandon Burton 21:48
go ahead. Go ahead.

Heather Kasten 21:50
I didn’t wrap up with we also partnered with four local foundations who commissioned a study to look at what is our current need, like, how many units do we really need? You know, you can’t, if you’re not keeping score, you’re really not playing the game. And so we had this study commission to look at how many units do we currently need, and how many will we need in 10 years, so that we can start planning, you know, for that. And then also took a look at the type of units needed? Do we need studio apartments? Do we need one bedroom, two bedroom? Or these families that are struggling? And so we just got those findings back, we have a program coming up in two weeks where they’re going to really go through the findings very descriptively, so that policy makers and developers so that we know what we need here in the future.

Brandon Burton 22:44
Yeah. So I guess that was going to be my question as to the type of housing. I would assume, something like condos or, like you said, the studios or the, you know, one or two bedrooms would depending on what those needs are. But also those young professionals today that are having those needs, you know, in 10 years. I’m glad that that’s that vision is being extended out to, what is that going to what’s that need? How’s that going to shift? You know, in the next several years? I know one of the other obstacles cities is communities look at solutions like this is the NIMBYs in the in the community, right? Those that don’t want it in their backyard. Has there been land identified for the more high density housing, and has that been approved, and has there been pushback from the community? How do you guys address that and overcome that?

Heather Kasten 23:34
Yeah, well, it’s fascinating. Nobody that you talk to is against affordable housing, just not in their backyard. Yeah, just not in my backyard, right? And so the uniqueness of the zoning text changes that that we worked on is that they’re along our major corridors. So these are very well traveled, you know, you’re not going to build a million dollar house on, you know, next to a four lane highway. And so the city was able to identify ground along these major corridors, along major, you know, retail, mixed use projects and and the exciting thing too is now, as developers are going before our planning board and our City Commission to get their projects approved, many of them are coming with an affordable housing component, and so they might be building, you know, they still might be building, you know, $2 million units, but they’re coming and saying, Okay, well, 15 of these, we’re going to go, going to make affordable, and with that, then they can build more units, so that, that’s Where that density thing comes into play the density bonus. And so we we have seen that is working. We are seeing projects that are coming online with an affordable component. So they’re going to be mixed in with the $2 million units. They might not be as big as the $2 million units, but they’re going to be in the same building and no. Is really going to know, you know, are you the $2 million homeowner? Are you the, you know, $250,000

Brandon Burton 25:07
homeowner? Yeah, I like that. I like when it can be blended in there and and you can’t tell, right? There’s so many interesting dynamics when it comes to housing, when there it comes to, you could maybe argue income inequality in certain communities, and when you get the higher density next to others, it just creates a lot of dynamics, but that chamber is perfectly positioned to be able to help navigate through those dynamics. So sounds like you guys are making a great impact there, and a lot of good headway. Is there anything else on the affordable housing front that you want to touch on before we move on?

Heather Kasten 25:48
Just you know that, you know, we’re still fighting that fight. Of course, there are some market factors. The influx of people moving to Florida has slowed, and certainly the market has cooled a little bit, which that is good for supply and demand and brings us down. It brings the market to more of a steady state. You know, for two and three years, it was on a left to right upward curve of pricing and lack of availability that, you know, lack of things on the market. And so that has cooled a little bit too. So I think it’s all of those things working together that are going to, you know, really help position our community to be, you know, more affordable for especially those key workers, like we talked about,

Brandon Burton 26:34
yeah, I’m in Texas, so we’ve seen a lot of that same, you know, type of growth. A lot of people leaving places like California and coming to places where they can buy a home for cash, and it prices a lot of people out, and then you get the congestion with the, you know, the traffic. And so it’s a continual problem, but we don’t have as many of the nice beaches that Florida has. So I mean, that just really compounds your guys’s problem there. So, but Heather, I wanted to ask, on behalf of those listening who want to take their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you share with them towards accomplishing that goal?

Heather Kasten 27:13
I would say one thing that we have done that has really made a difference is really being intentional about taking care of your team. And we have put together the last two years a we call IT staff engagement committee that meets once a month to plan various things for us to do. It can be things like visiting, getting a behind the scenes tour at the airport. It could be touring, you know, an attraction here locally, it could be just going out for a happy hour, being very intentional. And we’ve also made a pretty significant investment into what I call like a team coach, someone who is working with us as a team, helping us to work together. You know, chamber life. It’s, it’s awesome, it is super fun, but it’s also exhausting. It’s always one thing, you know, one event to the next. It is, you know, you’re constantly out there hustling for for members, and it’s a lot on an individual and a lot on a team. And so one of the best things that I feel like I’ve been able to bring to the table as CEO is for us, for me, to really support and and not just put my, you know, it’s more than just, you know, ordering pizza once a month kind of thing, just being very intentional with what we do with our team and our staff. And just for instance, we had a monster event, probably our biggest event of the year last week. It was our Sarasota business awards of 600 person lunch with 10,000 moving parts. And you know, going into this week, I just was like, You know what we’re I’m going to call close the office on Thursday too. So this week, the team is going to have a four day weekend. And I think you can never invest in your staff. You the payback on that is tenfold.

Brandon Burton 29:12
Yeah, I love that. The whole idea of having a staff engagement committee, I think, is very intentional to make sure that their needs are being met, and making sure that burnout doesn’t kick in sooner than it should.

Heather Kasten 29:27
And also just the flexibility, you know, I will say that our chamber, I have someone who likes to get here at 5am every morning. Now he’s out earlier in the afternoon, and then I have people that come in at 830 and go till five. And so just the offering people like true flexibility in how they do their job, and that has also been, I think, really rewarding and really helped to keep people here and engaged. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 29:55
that’s great. I love that, that piece of advice, I like asking. Everyone we have on the show about the future of chambers, and how you see the future and purpose of chambers going forward.

Heather Kasten 30:08
Well, I absolutely believe in the work that we do. I do feel like the model has to constantly be evaluated and tweaked. And so, you know, the days of kind of just doing the rinse and repeat and the networking events. I just don’t know how relevant some of those things are. And I’m constantly challenging our team to look at how we’re doing things and what we’re doing, why we’re doing them. I think you know really going back to, how do you best serve a business? What does that look like? Because it looks different than it looked five years ago, that and looks different than 20 years ago, for sure. And so I think just really being up on the wheel as to what your business community needs, and then being able to provide that, and also looking at some of the things that maybe in the past have just been done, like, oh, that’s just part of your membership. You know, are there ways to monetize some of the work that, that that you’re doing? And in being able to put $1 value to that, and that’s good that, that’s what keeps me up at 3am is, you know, what does that look like? How do we continue to grow and and all of those things?

Brandon Burton 31:24
Yeah, yeah, that’s great. Well, Heather, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information, so that way listeners who may want to reach out and learn more about these programs or how you’re doing things at the Greater Sarasota chamber, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you

Heather Kasten 31:41
sure. Uh, my email. Super easy. Just hkasten@sarasotachamber.com, that’s going to be the best way to get a hold of me. I’d encourage anyone to check out our website, which is just SarasotaChamber.com It lists all of the programs, all of the initiatives that we’re currently working on, but I’d love to hear from you, and would love to learn from you as well. That’s a great thing about chamber business, is that we can all share ideas and best practices and and, you know, all really encourage and help each other to grow and be better.

Brandon Burton 32:18
Yeah, we’ll get that in our show notes, so it’ll make it easy for people to find it and reach out to you. But it’s been great having you back on the podcast again. Big congratulations to you and your team for making those big impacts in your community. I wish you guys the best of luck in Philly, and we’ll see what happens.

Heather Kasten 32:38
All right, thanks so much. Brandon, I really, am truly honored to be on the podcast. Thanks for all you do.

Brandon Burton 32:45
If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.

Get started with your own Chamber Podcast and shortcut your learning curve with the Chamber Podcast Course offered by Chamber Chat Podcast.
Have you considered the many benefits of hosting a podcast for your Chamber? The options, leverage, and possibilities that a podcast offers are virtually endless. Download my FREE Chamber Podcasting Guide to learn how to start your own Chamber podcast!

2025 Chamber of the Year Finalist-Rowan County Chamber with Elaine Spalding

Miles Burdine Chamber Chat Podcast promo image.

Below is an auto-generated transcription. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.

Feel free to join our Chamber Chat Champions Facebook Group to discuss this episode and to share your own experiences and tips with other Chamber Champions.

Join the Facebook Group

Brandon Burton 0:00
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.

Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your hosts Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

Our title sponsor for this episode is Bringing Local Back. Remember when your community could turn to a local TV station or newspaper for the latest updates and affordable ads? Those days may be fading, but the need for local connection remains. That’s why we created Bringing Local Back, a game changing platform that restores the local visibility and advertising power to your community. It’s more than just tech. It’s about driving engagement and creating new revenue for your chamber. Ready to see the future visit bringinglocalback.com to schedule your demo today. This is the future of local commerce.

You’re joining us for a special episode in our 2025 ACCE Chamber of the Year Finalist Series. Our guest for this episode is Elaine Spalding. Elaine has served as the President of the Rowan Chamber of Commerce in Salisbury, North Carolina, since May 2013 with over 30 years of chamber management experience across several locations, she’s been instrumental in the Rowan chambers national recognition, earning the title of 2020 chamber Executive of the Year from the Carolina chamber Executives Association. Elaine holds certificate certifications as a CCE or certified chamber executive, and also has her IOM designation. She’s deeply involved in the community leadership, serving on multiple boards, including the Carolina Chamber of Commerce executives and the Salisbury Rotary Club, and is a graduate of leadership Rowan and the Charlotte regional American Leadership Forum program. Elaine holds a Bachelor’s of Science in journalism and speech from Murray State University and and enjoys kayaking, hiking and spending time with her husband, Keith, I believe is how you pronounce it, and their dogs. But Elaine, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. It seems like we just had you on the show, but love to give you the chance to say hello to everyone listening, and congratulations being selected as a chamber of the year finalist, but I couldn’t say hello. And if you would share something interesting so we can all get to know you even better.

Elaine Spalding 2:40
Sure. Thank you, Brandon, I really appreciate you inviting me back. I always enjoy your podcast, and I’m honored to be on here again. And we are so excited to have been named a finalist in our population size category for the ACCE chamber of the year. This is very exciting coming up. And in addition to what you covered in my chamber background and my personal life, fun fact to know is I have 101st

cousins. Wow, that’s quite the family, and I know them all. Yeah, wow.

Brandon Burton 3:24
So we just my wife, and I just had a new nephew born last week. Oh, so we’re, we’re adding up. You know, how many nieces and nephews, so cousins for our kids? And yes, we’re at, we’re at 13 for them, so nowhere near the 100 mark. But that’s, that’s impressive.

Elaine Spalding 3:39
Big Families, big, big farm families, and it’s great. I still keep in touch regularly with a lot of my cousins, and just love that extended family.

Brandon Burton 3:51
That’s awesome. Well, we had you on not too long ago, back in episode 327, but for those who are regular listeners, this next little bit might be a little bit of a recap, but I think it’s important for those who tune in, especially for these chamber of the year episodes, to be able to know a little more context about the Rowan County Chamber. So if you can just give us an idea of size of the chamber, staff, budget, scope of work you guys are involved with that’ll kind of set the stage for our discussion.

Elaine Spalding 4:20
Sure, this year, the Rowan chamber is celebrating our 100th anniversary, and that’s been a fun project to work on. We are lifting up our long term businesses all year long. We have 824 members as of right now, and growing, and we have a staff of four. It’s a very active business community. We have the headquarters for food line in our community. And if you’re from the southern part of the United States, you will know Cheerwine, very popular soda. So food line and Cheerwine are headquartered here in Salisbury, North. Carillon,

Brandon Burton 5:00
that’s right. And if you spend any time in the south, you know Food Lion, so, yeah, very good. Well, on these chamber of the year finalist episodes, what I like to spend the majority of our time discussing is the two programs you submitted on the chamber of the year application. So we’re gonna, we’re gonna take a quick break, and when we get back, we’ll dive in deeper on those two programs.

Joe Duemig
Hi, I’m Joe and I’m Rose, and we’re the founders of App My Community, a mobile app that can be customized to meet the unique needs of your chamber of commerce.

Rose Duemig
When we started App My Community, we envisioned a tool that would help communities thrive by simplifying communication and enhancing engagement, Chambers of Commerce face unique challenges, and we’re here to help you tackle them.

Joe Duemig
App My Community helps the Evergreen Area Chamber of Commerce to create an app that keeps tourists informed, even when their office is closed, they provide 24/7 access to local business information, which helps support the local economy and community engagement.

Rose Duemig
In Rocky Mountain House, we helped Rocky Chamber create an app with dynamic itineraries and digital resources for tourists, increasing local business engagement. The app has become an essential tool for the community, promoting events and boosting visibility for local merchants.

Joe Duemig
Today, we empower more than 200 Chambers of Commerce campgrounds and RV resorts to streamline communication, informing members about events, sharing business updates and providing a digital hub for the community all in one convenient

Rose Duemig
app. When you partner with App My Community, our team works closely with you to create an app that meets your Chamber’s unique needs. As your community grows, our app evolves with you. We are here to ensure you engage effectively with your members and streamline your operations.

Joe Duemig
Schedule a demo today AppMyCommunity.com. We can’t wait to meet you.

App My Community creates mobile apps that allow you to engage directly with your community. Enhance chamber membership by providing a unique advertising and communication channel to residents and visitors. Not just a member directory, App My Community has the tools to be useful to residents on a daily basis. Learn more at appmycommunity.com/chamberchat.

Clint Nessmith
Are you ready to take your organization’s funding to the next level? Hi. I’m Clint Nessmith, CEO of Resource Development Group as a chamber of commerce or economic development organization leader, I know you understand the value of working with experts who understand your world, and that’s exactly what RDG does best. For over 30 years, RDG has specialized in fundraising for EDOs and chambers. We bring cutting edge strategies tailored to your organization, whether you’re just starting out or gearing up for yet another new funding cycle. Importantly, our firm executives are hands on from start to finish, from the feasibility study to the successful conclusion of your fundraising campaign, and our team brings deep industry roots and national expertise to every engagement, no matter the size of your community. RDG delivers data driven, innovative revenue solutions, reinforcing ROI to investors and making sure your vision becomes reality. At RDG, we proudly build organizations that build communities. Visit us today at RDGFundraising.com and let us partner with you building a stronger future for your organization and the community you are working to grow and develop?

Brandon Burton 8:11
All right, Elaine, we’re back, as I mentioned before the break, we’re we’re diving into the two programs on your chamber of the year application. I don’t know if you have a specific order of which one you want to address first, but I will. I’ll let you decide which, uh, which of the two programs you want to highlight first.

Elaine Spalding 8:29
Well, of course, they. They are two of our very, very favorite ones that we profiled in the synopsis for the ACCE chamber of the Year award. And the first one is our Dragon Boat Festival. We celebrated our 10th Anniversary of the Dragon Boat Festival in 2024 and really thanked all of the businesses that have been with us for all 10 years. We put big number 10 blow up balloons on every one of the corporate tents, so the people who’d been with us for the entire time and thanked all of our long term volunteers and really celebrated all of those businesses that have helped make this event be so successful.

Brandon Burton 9:15
Okay, so I have to ask dragon boats, what is that? Tell us what that is. And just to make sure people are hearing you right, Dragon Boat what? What is

Elaine Spalding 9:24
it? If you have not participated in a dragon boat race, it’s basically a long canoe. It’s an ancient Chinese water sport. So you have 20 people in a very long canoe, all paddling together, and it is the best team building exercise, because everybody has to be in sync to get the boat to just glide along the water. Our major corporations love it. They tell us after every event that it’s the best opportunity to just hang out on the lake and really enjoy the day. With your coworkers. You’ve got the plant managers there and the frontline workers and everybody working together and just enjoying themselves. So it’s a wonderful community event. It would be kind of like what a lot of chambers have a golf event in the summer. This is our golf event. Okay?

Brandon Burton 10:17
So are these companies fielding their own team. I say Fielding? Are they filling their own boats?

Elaine Spalding 10:25
Yes, yes. We there there, as they’re about four or five vendors that do these Dragon Boat Races actually all over the world, and it’s gotten to be very popular in the southeastern part of the United States. In fact, it’s the fastest growing water sport. And of course, here in North Carolina, everybody loves races. We have NASCAR. And so we thought this is just a great way to highlight we have the second largest lake in North Carolina, right in our community, High Rock Lake. So it was a fantastic way to highlight that part of our community and just have a fun day on the lake and make some money for the chamber and make some new friends.

Brandon Burton 11:06
Yeah, I love that they can, you know, fill their own boat and come out, but it is a great team building exercise. I’m sure there’s practices that have to go into this, like, you can’t just show up and try to compete, right? Yes,

Elaine Spalding 11:18
yes. And there are some club teams in and around the area, groups of people that get together just for fun, and they’ll pick out four or five races they’re going to do in this part of the country and participate with us. So that’s a nice added benefit as well.

Brandon Burton 11:34
So where does somebody acquire a dragon boat? Are there? Is there local manufacturers? Are they importing from China? With being a Chinese tradition, what is the Where does one get

Elaine Spalding 11:45
them out anymore? Okay, we actually have a company out of Tampa that makes the dragon boats here in the United States. And they will bring them up on big, long boat trailers, and they bring all the personnel, the steers, people, the coaches, the race officials. I mean, it’s all very sophisticated, and they run the race. The chamber’s responsibility is to run the festival part. So we get the food trucks and our local breweries all participate, and it’s just a fun, fun day on the

Brandon Burton 12:14
lake. So they’re bringing the boats with them when they come up. So these businesses are not storing their own dragon boats in their workshop, or whatever they’re they’re just using them for the event.

Elaine Spalding 12:24
Yes, we bring everything they need. We tell all of our teams they just need to bring the people power.

Brandon Burton 12:30
Okay, all right. So what other things I mean, most chambers, I think, are pretty well familiar with running a festival. But is there anything unique with the dragon boat races, it needs to be considered where it maybe takes the festival, you know, to a different angle or a different approach,

Elaine Spalding 12:48
right? Well, one of the things that we really wanted to focus on was improving the health in our community, so we thought this kind of a fun outdoor activity would enable us to do that. And one of our top sponsors of the event is our local hospital, and so in conjunction with Novant Health, we award a workplace wellness award every year at the Dragon Boat Festival, and that’s based on companies that encourage their employees to stay active and stay healthy, and, you know, not have any injuries in the workplace, and that has really gotten to be so popular, we have a traveling trophy that goes around, and many of our companies are all vying to say, look, we started this new workplace wellness program. Please recognize our company. So it’s a great added benefit to the program.

Brandon Burton 13:38
Yeah, I love that. There’s so many layers you can just, you know, dive into when it comes to an event like this. So how do the bragging rights look? So whatever team wins the dragon boat races? Is there a trophy with that? Is there, I’m sure social media posts. What’s a recognition like? Is

Elaine Spalding 13:56
it we have the Olympic style medals, and so there are gold, silver and bronze teams, and all, all of the teams are so excited about getting those Olympic style medals at the end of the race. And Team pictures are lots of fun. And the the Bragg and rights every year, it’s like the there’s one bank and the hospital and a couple of others that are very, very competitive. There’s a couple of teams that just come to have a fun day on the lake. They’re not quite so competitive, but it always, always is just a great opportunity for the top business leaders and our entry level employees to really feel appreciated by the business community, and that’s what we want to see happen. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 14:46
I love it. It’s such a unique event. I’ve never I have not heard of any other chambers doing Dragon Boat Races, so I think that’s a neat thing to be able to hone on, hone in on something that’s unique and kind of special to your community. 30. I love what you guys did with the the 10 years and the balloons, recognizing those people that have sponsored it for the duration. I mean, that that goes a long ways of saying, Hey, we recognize that you’re doing this. And it creates a little bit of a stickiness, I would imagine, for next year they’re going to want to continue that sponsorship.

Elaine Spalding 15:19
Yes, as Chambers of Commerce. You know, we all have to really think about thanking and appreciating those businesses who’ve been with us through thick and thin, all the businesses that stayed with us through the pandemic and have helped us out since then, really get all of the Small Business Programs and Services back out there for our business communities, and so we want to continue to highlight and thank those very, very loyal

Brandon Burton 15:47
businesses. Yeah, very good. Well, let’s shift gears a bit into your second program, which I understand is around your small business grant program. Yeah, tell us about that. What’s what’s involved there, and what role does the chamber have with that? Yes.

Elaine Spalding 16:05
So as you know, there were lots and lots of federal grant and loan opportunities that carried small businesses through the pandemic. But since the pandemic, some of our small businesses had continued to struggle, and I had been lobbying with our city of Salisbury government to continue a small business grant program, and last year, we were finally able to convince them to start a pilot program. So we started with $30,000 to award two small businesses that were within the city of Salisbury, and our chamber serves a county region, but this one was specifically targeted for those within the city, because that’s where the funding was coming from. And so we got a committee of volunteers from our minority business council and put out all of the grant criteria they had to have a business plan, they had to have all their proper documentation. And we had volunteers that developed a rubric, and we went through all of the grant applications and were able to award six small businesses with $5,000 each. And oh my gosh. When we sent out the information about the grant recipients, we received so many positive comments. One email from a small business. She said, I just am sitting here crying because I was struggling to try to figure out my next plan. And she said, this has given me the energy to get everything back on my plan and get going again. So it just was so gratifying to see these small businesses that really have been struggling feel like the local business community and their city government supports them and wants to see them continue to invest in their business. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 18:04
I’m sure there’s a wealth of data that you collect too from these applications as you go through it. And you see these small businesses that sure really need these loans to be able to survive. They can give you a ton of content for future programming and things like that. But like this example you share to this, this lady, that it just meant the world. It was it allowed the business to keep going. And I think as small business owners, there’s so many instances where you’re just getting beat up left and right, and to get that little win, that encouragement that says, keep going, you got this sometimes that’s all they need to be able to get over that hump that they’re they’re currently facing. So, yeah, I love that. I love hearing the success stories.

Elaine Spalding 18:47
Yeah, yes, me too. And we’ve related all those back to our friends at the city, and we’re able to have the second phase of the small business grant, and got some additional funds, and we, we the chamber actually has a 501, c3, organization devoted to entrepreneurial development, so there’s some additional funds that came through that. And just lifting up our locally owned, locally grown small businesses is so important and continuing to encourage other people to go ahead and launch that entrepreneurial venture?

Brandon Burton 19:27
Yeah, absolutely, so. Is this something that you would anticipate with continued success, continuing to have funding coming from it, or is there a timeframe where you see this ending with the grant programs, or what the

Elaine Spalding 19:45
second phase we’ve already awarded for this year too, and has had $10,000 more so total of 20,000 to give this second year. And I really hope that it continues to grow, because there are so many of those small businesses. That are struggling, I think, particularly in our current climate, lots of uncertainties about new federal policies and so everything that we can do as a local Chamber of Commerce to really try and encourage those who have a good business plan, they’ve got the skill set to get that business off and running, they just need a little bit of support. Our grant program was focused on something, a piece of machinery that they might need for their business, you know? I mean, it had to be something that, then was a really good return on the investment that they would be able to continue to grow their business.

Brandon Burton 20:43
That makes a lot of sense. So just out of curiosity, did you already have the foundation in place, the 501, c3 as you receive these grants in order to be able to apply for them, or is it a newer thing having the foundation?

Elaine Spalding 20:56
Yes, we’ve had the c3 within our organization for the last six

Brandon Burton 21:03
years. Okay, so I know that’s more and more on the the minds of chambers to how can we access, you know, more funds and be eligible for grants and things like this and and having that foundation or that 501, c3, is, is very helpful to be able to attract some of those, those funds. And, of course, having the the purpose for it, right? Like you said, it’s developed for the entrepreneurial development so,

Elaine Spalding 21:29
right, right. And just all of the news about that has brought more members to the chamber. You know, we did not take a grant administration fee for doing this program with the city, and really felt strongly that we wanted all of the funds to go to the small businesses. And as a result of that, I think that has elevated the role of the chamber in the community. And just today, I got another email from a business that wanted to know when’s the next round of small business grant funding. So now we’re able to give them a time frame in the year that they need to get all of their paperwork together. This this particular business was still in the process of getting all of their state and local approvals, and so then they’ve got something to look forward to when they get all of that documentation together. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 22:23
and I love the idea that the criteria is that it needs to go towards a piece of equipment or something. It’s not just, you know, bringing in some part time help for a little bit, but it’s something that’s going to be a game changer for this business. So I love that pouring gas on the fire, as they say,

Elaine Spalding 22:42
it’s been great. And you know, those partnerships that we can do with our local governments, with our local education partners, I mean, those are the things that I see, you know, making the pie bigger for everybody in our communities.

Brandon Burton 22:55
Yeah, absolutely. So I like asking everybody. I asked you when you’re on the show before, I always like having a tip or action item for listeners who want to take their chamber up to the next level. I think, especially as a chamber of the year finalist, very appropriate to ask what you would suggest for chambers trying to accomplish that goal. What would come to mind for you

Elaine Spalding 23:19
Well being a CCE finalist of the year, I would encourage everyone to attend the ACCE conference. I pick up so many great ideas at every one of the conferences, and just sitting down at lunch or maybe over a beer at the end of the day, you can really help your chamber if you’ve got something you’ve been struggling with, but you haven’t exactly known who to go to, you know, just shout it out in one of those meetings, and you’ll get four or five people that have been there and they have been through the Battle and can tell you how to work your way through any issue or problem that you’ve got going

Brandon Burton 24:06
on. Absolutely I would echo that. I mean, the ACCE conference is great because these are the chambers that really value, you know, those peer connections and the continual education to be able to run a very good chamber and state associations are great too. Regional associations do all those. But there’s something special about the ACCE conference, where you’ve got some of the best of the best chambers that are there, and if you can connect and and make friends, you know, with with other peers that are there in those rooms, that’s where the magic happens. So

Elaine Spalding 24:38
yes, I appreciate that. Brandon, I encourage people to listen to your podcast and to take advantage of all of those professional development opportunities that you can, because you can always pick up at least one good idea from any time that you devote for your own professional development.

Brandon Burton 24:57
Absolutely So the other question. Question I like asking everyone I have on the show is, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Elaine Spalding 25:08
Well, and again, plugging acces horizon initiative, if you read that document, I mean, that is the future of our chambers of commerce all over the world and for chamber execs to be nimble and to be able to deal with whatever issue is going on globally, nationally, locally, you know, we are dealing with housing issues and daycare issues that I never thought our local chambers would be involved in strategies around that for our communities. I mean, we used to be so focused on it’s a business issue. It’s got to do with something that’s going to help the business community. But all Yes, yes, all of these growth issues, particularly in the Carolinas, we’re seeing such growth. We need to help our communities deal with the issues that are also impact impacting our employers, housing issues, daycare issues. I mean, it is huge for our

Brandon Burton 26:10
employers. Yeah, absolutely. Well, this has been great having you back on the show. I wanted to give you an opportunity to plug any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and learn more about these programs or how you guys are approaching things at the Rowan County Chamber. What would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect with

Elaine Spalding 26:31
you? Always happy to help my fellow chamber buddies. It’s Elaine Spaulding. The telephone number at the Rowan chamber is 704-633-4221, or you can email me at espalding@rowanchamber.com,

Brandon Burton 26:47
that’s perfect. We’ll get that in our show notes to make it nice and easy. Bet Elaine, thank you for coming back on the show and sharing the highlights of these two programs. I’m so excited for you guys, and wish you and your team Best of luck, not only with the dragon race festival, but also this chamber of the year.

Elaine Spalding 27:05
Thank you. Thank you, Brandon. I really appreciate you inviting me to be on again.

Brandon Burton 27:10
If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.

Get started with your own Chamber Podcast and shortcut your learning curve with the Chamber Podcast Course offered by Chamber Chat Podcast.
Have you considered the many benefits of hosting a podcast for your Chamber? The options, leverage, and possibilities that a podcast offers are virtually endless. Download my FREE Chamber Podcasting Guide to learn how to start your own Chamber podcast!